







Class 

Boole 

BEQUEST OF 

ALBERT ADSIT CLEMONS 
(Not available for exchange) 























































THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE STORY OF EDEN 
CAPTAIN AMYAS 
AS YE HAVE SOWN 
MAFOOTA 

ROSE-WHITE YOUTH 

, / 

THE PATHWAY OF THE PIONEER 

TROPICAL TALES 

THE RIDING MASTER 

THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

VERSES 





THE CAREER OF 
BEAUTY DARLING 


BY 


DOLF WYLLARDE 


W 

AUTHOR OF “THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON,” “THE RIDING 
MASTER,” “THE STORY OF EDEN,” ETC. 



NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMXII 


Copyright, 1912, by 
JOHN LANE COMPANY 


.W^rs 

Cart, 

Ce n 


Bequest 

Albert Adsit Clemons 
Aug. 24, 1938 
(Not available for exchange) 


“YEA, I KNOW IT. HOLD YE YOUR PEACE 




















































'/Vi', 
































































































































THE CAREER OF BEAUTY 
DARLING 


CHAPTER I 

T HE Spring had come, even in the London suburbs. 

All along the road from Wimbledon into Merton 
the scraps of hedges had broken into leaf, and on waste 
pieces of ground grew starved buttercups and sainfoin 
which the dirty schoolchildren had spared to pick. 
May had been cold so far, but there had been plenty 
of sun. Now, one evening in the middle of the month, 
a sudden warmth brought a feeling of enervation into 
the air, so that people lagged by the roadside, and 
showed a tendency to loiter even in the ugly byways 
that were not town or country. 

A man tramping along in the dusty highway that led 
from Wimbledon shifted his load of artists' para- 
phernalia, and pushed the old cap back from his lined, 
dark eyes. He was not a young man, and he had been 
tramping in a desultory fashion from Surrey towards 
the City of London — the real City, that lay beyond 
Balham and Brixton, to which his face was set. The 
children whom he passed turned to stare at him and 
his pack, but as much from an excuse to idle as from 
any interest; for he was by no means an artistic or 
romantic figure, despite his profession — a tall, spare 
man, with a face that was evil despite its refinement, 
and sinister because of the effects of dissipation and 

x i 


2 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


self-indulgence. He had lived for forty years in the 
world, and few of them had been harmless, either for 
himself or others; but because he had not grown fat, or 
wore a beard, people sometimes mistook him for thirty- 
five. There were times, on the other hand, when he 
looked fifty. 

He had passed through Merton, with its glimpses 
of a ruined Abbey — which he had noted and con- 
demned as a useless subject — and had reached Wan- 
dlebridge, that strip of straggling cottages and a 
muddy stream flanked by Mlotment grounds. The 
Wandle trickled along one side of the road with hardly 
the claim to be called anything more than a ditch, 
and on the other side were small buildings of red brick 
with strips of garden in front, and dingy signposts to 
the effect that this person was an undertaker or that 
took in washing. It was all infinitely sordid and de- 
pressing. Even the quiet evening was defiled by the 
raucous sound of London voices raised in timely gos- 
sip, and the lean man with the ugly face made a wry 
mouth as he strode onwards, his dusty shoes showing 
signs of wear and tear that suggested a weary journey. 

He had no intention of staying in Wandlebridge, his 
next goal being the Pool of London; but the folding 
easel rasped his shoulder, so that he turned aside for 
a minute to alter the burden, and in a narrow lane 
at right angles to the highroad he slipped the whole 
pack to the ground and stood up at his full height for 
a moment, to stretch his many inches. Then, before 
he loaded himself again, he turned round and looked 
up the lane towards a gentler prospect of more open 
country. 

The cottages here stopped abruptly beyond the row 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 3 

fronting the highroad, and behind the one at the cor- 
ner was something he could not have seen if he had 
not turned into the lane — an apple-tree in full blos- 
som. The long rays of the sinking sun shone full 
upon the rosy boughs and green tufts of leaves, and 
the tired man gave a little sigh of pleasure at the 
perfect thing. He left his pack in the middle of the 
lane in a way which was characteristic had anyone 
been there who knew him, and walking up to the pal- 
ing which guarded the cottage, looked more closely 
at the tree. It stood in a small space of grass, too 
small to be called a field, where some chickens were 
wandering in search of food, and beyond was the 
gradual slope of an allotment ground, blurred to 
general greenness by the evening light. But as he ap- 
proached the tree he was aware of something besides 
the wealth of blossom — two legs in thick stockings 
much wrinkled about the ankles and a pair of shabby 
brown shoes. They were a girl’s legs, though the 
short skirts were not even visible, but a minute later 
the branches were parted to satisfy the curiosity of 
the owner of the legs, and a face appeared framed in 
the apple blossoms. 

It was the face of a little girl of about thirteen or 
fourteen years old — a face that had lost no curve of 
childhood and was rather round save for the beautiful 
moulding of the lower jaw, the line of which ran al- 
most straight from the lobe of the ear to the decided 
chin. The features were small and well cut and the 
lips red and inclined to pout. But it was the general 
effect of ideal health and youth which was so arresting 
among the bonny apple blossoms, — the bloom of sun- 
burnt cheeks, the gloss of the golden-brown hair curl- 


4 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

mg thickly round the whole face, the deep, dewy eyes 
beneath long lashes and daintily drawn brows. There 
was hardly any character in the face as yet, and ab- 
solutely no experience to make it interesting. It was 
just beautiful, and an ideal type of Youth. 

The man in the road and the girl in the tree stared 
at each other for a few seconds in absolute silence. 
Then the face was withdrawn amongst the apple blos- 
som, there was a scramble, and something tumbled on 
to the soft grass and ran into the back of the house. 
He could see the outline of her figure as she ran, and 
it was that of a neatly made child clumsily dressed in a 
coarse stuff frock and white pinafore. 

The artist turned back to the lane and picked up his 
pack, which he slung on to his shoulders again. The 
lines about his eyes had deepened, and he was smiling, 
so that he looked devilish rather than ingratiating. 
But the sunset was behind him as he walked round 
to the front of the cottage and knocked at the door, 
and the person who opened it could only see a tall man 
silhouetted against the sky. 

“ I beg your pardon for troubling you,” said the 
artist in a voice that was unexpectedly charming. 
“ But I wonder if you could advise me where I might 
get a room hereabouts for a few days? I want to 
make a sketch of — of Merton Abbey. I am not a 
very tiresome lodger, for I only want a bed, and I get 
my meals out anywhere.” 

The person who had answered the door to his 
knock was a large stout woman in a respectable cotton 
gown and apron, although her sleeves were rolled ba*ck 
to the elbow and it was evident from the smell of 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 5 

steam and soap that she had been washing. She had 
once probably been good-looking, but there was noth- 
ing now in her hard-featured face at all resembling 
the vision in the apple-tree. There had been some- 
thing uncompromising in her attitude when she first 
opened the door, but at the sound of the visitor’s voice 
an intangible change came over her. One felt that 
she had been about to speak as to an equal — possibly 
an intrusive inferior — and that now she was going 
to add “ sir.” 

“ Will you come inside, sir? ” was what she actually 
said, with a reserved civility that seemed to preserve 
her self-respect very carefully. “ I’m doing some 
washing, and my hands are wet.” It was noticeable 
that though she did not misplace her h’s or make any 
mistakes in English, her accent contrived to be that of 
the lower classes. The tired, dusty man followed her 
into a sitting-room with horsehair-covered furniture 
and a round table on which were several “ gift ” books 
in the centre. But in the window (which was merci- 
fully open) stood a giant aspidistra, a really magnif- 
icent plant, the girth of whose pot alone was consider- 
ably over a yard. 

“ What a splendid fellow ! ” said the artist at once, 
walking over to the plant with a kind of brotherly 
good-fellowship. His voice was the voice for which 
lovers have pined in all ages, making the lightest word 
a caress and the most trivial phrase holy. A bishop 
or an actor would have found a fortune in such a 
voice. Taken in conjunction with his face it was 
a hideous irony. 

It was evident, however, that his instinct for tact 


6 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


was equal to the dulcet notes of his voice. The 
woman's face lost a little of its reserve and almost 
brightened. 

“ I’ve had that plant four year,” she said, wiping 
her wet hands on her useful linen apron and sitting 
down on one of the hard slippery chairs. “ Sit down 
sir, you look tired. Yes, many’s the people come in 
here just to look at it nearer, seeing it stand in the 
window there. I never had no trouble with it. Just 
watered it myself and cut the dead leaves. It do 
grow beautiful.” 

“ It is such a wonderful size ! ” said the artist 
simply, letting his pack fall once more from his shoul- 
ders. “ I’m not fit to come into your sitting-room. 
I’m so covered with dust. I’ve walked from Reigate 
to-day. .Will my traps hurt the carpet ? ” He 
looked down at it as if considering its egregious red 
cabbages on a black ground, with a border of false 
oilcloth where it did not reach to the wainscot. But 
his hostess saw only his outward politeness. 

“ That’s nothing — don’t you think about it. My 
girl will sweep it over. I’m thinking of your getting 
a room, sir. Mrs. Higgins used to let to a young 
man about Christmas time, and I think he’s left. 
You might have his room.” 

“ Is Mrs. Higgins a neighbour of yours ? ” 

Somehow his delightful voice conveyed a distinct 
and flattering impression that he did not wish to be far 
away from this his first friend — and the aspidistra. 
He was very tired and shabby, and it was extremely 
unlikely that Mrs. Higgins or anyone else would make 
much out of him ; but the woman knew that he was a 
gentleman, and also that she was going to make him 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 7 

what was really a generous offer. Her real reason 
for this was because he had reached and played upon 
the softer side of her nature with a touch as delicate 
and unerring as any specialist in emotions; but that 
she did not know. 

“ Look here, sir, there’s my brother Tom’s room — 
you’re welcome to that if you don’t mind a sloping 
roof. I don’t think Mrs. Higgins would suit you, and 
I know my own things are clean.” 

“ I like a sloping roof ! ” said the artist, smiling 
very gently, for he knew that he was apt to destroy 
the impression of his voice when he smiled. It had 
all the gigantic cynicism of the king of hell. 

“ It’s not a hot room,” said the woman, rising with 
a certain slowness that suggested rheumatism. “ It 
faces north, but it’s right up in the roof.” 

“I want a north aspect of all things!” said the 
artist almost breathlessly. “ But you said the room 
was your brother’s — ? ” 

“ It was, sir — he’s dead ! ” The woman stopped 
with startling suddenness on her way to the door, and 
turned round to plunge into reminiscence. “ He 
came to me at Christmas — to spend it all together 
like — and his wife, my sister-in-law, had written to 
say he was very ill, but I saw the minute he come in 
at that gate that he was done! And he so cheerful 
and hopeful too. ‘ It’s all right, Mary,’ he says; ‘ I’ll 
be better in a few days and amongst you all,’ just as 
his wife was helping him up to bed. ‘Torn,’ I says; 
‘ don’t deceive yourself, my boy. You'll never come 
down again out of this house but feet first!’ That 
was before Christmas, and he was buried on Boxing 
Day.” 


8 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


The artist’s mouth twitched, and it seemed as if his 
tact failed him for a minute. Something in this 
Christmas greeting to the unfortunate invalid seemed 
to appeal to his sense of humour. But his hostess 
did not wait for a reply. 

“ And there’s his room all ready, sir, left just as 
he had it, and you’re welcome to it for half-a-crown a 
week. You can go up and see it now, if you like, but 
if you’ll excuse me I won’t show you myself, for the 
stairs are bad for me. My girl will take you up — 
Beau-ty ! Beau-ty ! ” 

“ Wait a minute,” said the artist, as she turned to- 
wards the regions whence the smell of washing still 
issued. “ Of course you must not climb those steep 
stairs — but would you tell me your name? Mine is 
Trevor Guy.” 

“ Mrs. Darling,” said the woman with the same 
unconscious dignity. “ I’ll send my girl — or else the 
laundry help. Beau-ty ! Beau-ty ! ” 

She walked down the passage in the same deliberate, 
ponderous fashion, leaving Trevor Guy waiting at the 
foot of the narrow staircase. He had time to reflect 
that Mrs. Darling had the build of a person who 
would die of apoplexy if not careful of her health, be- 
fore a new figure appeared from the regions into which 
she had vanished — new, and yet not new to Trevor, 
for it was the girl who had been sitting in the apple- 
tree. 

She did not come very willingly, and after her first 
quick glance of recognition she did not appear very 
interested. When he stood near to her Guy saw that 
she was of a very different type to Mrs. Darling 
physically, whatever likeness there might be mentally. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 9 

The father — if this were Mrs. Darling’s daughter, 
and she looked too young a child for the heavy work 
of the laundry, to be the “help” — must have been 
small-boned and delicately turned, for even her hands, 
though reddened and roughened, belonged to a dif- 
ferent breed to Mrs. Darling’s. Her marvellous pret- 
tiness had not owed anything to the glamour of the 
apple blossom and the sunset. She was just as much 
the personification of Youth as she ran up the stairs 
in front of him as she had been leaning from the 
branches. “ Nevertheless, I will paint her in the 
apple-tree, exactly as I first saw her,” said Trevor Guy 
to himself as he followed her. 

The room was literally, as Mrs. Darling had said, 
under the roof. The back portion of the cottage had 
been an older building, and the new and ugly frontage 
had been built on to match its neighbours. But being 
the corner house it ran back into the lane, and from 
the first floor a second and very irregular flight of 
steps led into that chamber from which poor Tom was 
only destined to descend “ feet first.” Guy’s ob- 
servant eyes took in the details of the place with the 
training of his profession and with some satisfaction. 
It was furnished as only the lower middle class do 
furnish, with a mixture of extreme penury and show ; 
but though the low pallet bed looked very hard, the 
coverlet was quite clean, and if the furniture was 
gimcrack there was mercifully little of it. The win- 
dow in the gable of the roof faced due north, as Mrs. 
Darling had promised, and the room was large if low. 

“Who else sleeps on this side of the house?” he 
asked, turning to the indifferent figure of the girl 
waiting at the door. 


io THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ No one ! ” was the answer, delivered in a very shy 
voice. 

“ Is there any other room? ” 

“ Yes, but mother only uses it for storing things in 
it. Aunt Carrie did sleep there in the winter when 
Uncle Tom was so ill, but there’s no one there now.” 

“ Oh ! ” He turned a little more towards her and 
smiled that careful smile. “And are you Mrs. Dar- 
ling’s daughter ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And what is your name? ” 

“ Beauty ! ” she answered after more hesitation. It 
was not the claim of the appellation that made her 
tongue-tied, or its undoubted and pointed application 
tQ herself; but something in the gentleman himself 
made her uncomfortable. He did not interest her, 
for he was so elderly in her eyes as to be almost beyond 
the sphere of sex — “ a young man ” to Beauty Dar- 
ling being strictly within the age limits of seventeen to 
twenty-six — and he was neither well-dressed nor 
good-looking. And yet she felt the same alien at- 
mosphere that had made Mrs. Darling call him “ sir,” 
and it weighed upon her in conjunction with that 
deeply sweet voice that was so bewildering to all those 
who first heard it. It was a relief to her when she 
made good her escape to the kitchen again, though the 
irksome task of ironing the finer articles of apparel 
awaited her there. 

Trevor Guy took the room. He had slept in many 
worse places, and it was as cheap as anything he was 
likely to get in London on this side of the water. He 
was little trouble as a lodger, as he had promised, for 
he got his meals at the nearest public-house when he 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING II 


did not eat bread and cheese at his easel, and he really 
did make a sketch of Merton Abbey and sent it to an 
art shop in Westminster which occasionally sold his 
drawings on commission, and to his own surprise got 
fifteen shillings for it the first week it appeared in the 
window. This was a fluke, and was probably the re- 
sult of some sentimental association with Merton on 
the part of the buyer; but it ensured his rent for a few 
weeks to come, and he stayed on in Mrs. Darling’s 
cottage for the real purpose for which he had gone 
there — to paint a picture of the girl in the apple- 
tree. 

He was far too subtle to betray his intention all at 
once, and he knew with the fine sense that had been 
both his success and his disaster all his life that if he 
had suggested painting her daughter to Mrs. Darling 
she would have taken fright and made up her mind 
once for all that it was undesirable. He made studies 
of the fleeting apple blossom while it still clung to the 
tree, and sat out day after day in the little back gar- 
den among the chickens, where Beauty might be seen 
coming and going on various errands and duties when 
she was not at school. She attended a school in Wan- 
dlebridge rather above the Board Schools of ten years 
ago — an old Foundation whose pupils paid some five 
pounds a year for the privilege of being taught to 
spell decently and write an educated hand, and it was 
due to her training there that her accent and English 
were better than Mrs. Darling’s, though, like all girls 
of her class, she had two manners and two languages 
— one that she put on in the vestibule of the school 
when she arrived there and took off when she left, 
and the other that she assumed in her own home. 


12 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


Remnants of the school language and manner re- 
sumed themselves instinctively in her brief relations 
with Guy, and that was how he came to comprehend 
the dual personality. 

He had been nearly a week in Mrs. Darling’s cot- 
tage before he said to her casually, “ I want a figure 
in my picture of your apple-tree. I will give your 
little girl a shilling if she will climb into the tree and 
sit there for me to paint.” 

Mrs. Darling shut her lips. A desire to accommo- 
date her lodger was evidently being balanced by some 
private objection to the proposal. 

“ Well, I’d rather she did not, sir,” she said unwil- 
lingly. “ It’s very kind of you, I’m sure, and I don’t 
mind about giving her anything for doing it.” (She 
had generously saved the artist small expenses when 
possible, which consideration for his means caused 
him that wry smile again when forced upon his no- 
tice. It was the only time when he thought of his 
own family and their traditions with any tolerance.) 
“ But I don’t want her to think she’s worth making a 
picture of — she’s vain enough as things are, and al- 
ways getting her head full of dressing up and finery 
and all.” 

“ But I only want her as a figure study,” said Guy 
with an easy laugh. “ I’m not painting her portrait. 
I don’t think she could find it very flattering to be 
made use of like that; she will probably think it a 
great nuisance, and want to run off and play with her 
schoolfellows. How old is she? ” 

“ Beauty is fourteen.” 

“ Is she really ! She looks about eleven,” he said 
with well- feigned surprise, for he had guessed the 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 13 

girl’s age correctly, small though she was. “ She 
must be getting useful to you in the house.” 

“ She might be if she would, but she hates work; 
she isn’t even one of the clever ones at school. I’d 
have made her a teacher if she had been that way, but 
she’ll have to go into a shop, or service.” 

“ Children are a disappointment, aren’t they, Mrs. 
Darling?” 

“ They are, sir. I’m almost thankful sometimes as 
all mine died young.” 

“All your children?” He turned quickly with 
some real surprise in his dark eyes this time, and they 
half closed as they did when he was considering a 
“ subject.” 

“ Yes, sir; Beauty’s not one of my daughters, 
though she’s called so for charity’s sake. She’s a 
come-by-chance.” 

“ Ah ! ” The sweet voice was very low and sympa- 
thetic, and wooed Mrs. Darling into confidences even 
by the one word. He did not even smile at the quaint 
phrase for illegitimacy. 

“ She was just truly left on the doorstep; we were 
living in Bloomsbury then,” said Mrs. Darling with 
some secret enjoyment of the story. “ I’d not lost my 
husband six months, and the children was all dead.. 
And there was this poor small thing lying there in a 
shawl; I tell you, sir, she was one of the smallest 
babies I have ever seen, not weighing more than nine 
pounds, and my children had weighed that when they 
was just born! But there it was, and she was eight 
or ten months old, the doctor thought. Not a sign 
to trace her by ! The shawl was a cheap thing, bought 
new for the purpose, and it was a poor neighbourhood. 


14 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

Some unfortunate creature must have left her there 
and said good riddance ! ” 

“And you took her in? You are a good woman, 
Mrs. Darling!” There was just the necessary en- 
thusiasm and emotion in his tones to continue the 
story, but he did not mean to tell the plain truth. 
Truth, plain or otherwise, did not appeal to Trevor 
Guy. 

“ What else could I do, sir ? ” Mrs. Darling in her 
turn was a thought dramatic, enjoying the situation. 
“ I’d none of my own left, and a pair of hands to 
work for us both. Yes, I took her and brought her 
up. But there’s none of me in her — she would never 
have pulled through the hard time we had if she’d 
been in my place.” 

“ What made you call her Beauty ? Is it her real 
name? ” 

“ I had her christened that, yes. Well, you see, she 
was such a little beauty, though so small, or I thought 
so at the time. And her teacher at school says she’s 
well named still, though she thinks it was a pity to call 
her so.” 

“ But I’m sure she’s a good girl with your train- 
ing ! ” He was slightly curious on this point. 
Beauty’s history, poor child! had made her doubly 
artistic in his eyes. 

“ Good enough, while my eye is on her. You can’t 
make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. She must have 
come of a bad stock. Decent women don’t leave their 
babies on doorsteps to the mercy of other people ! ” 

“Are you a Calvinist, Mrs. Darling? Do you 
think she is doomed from the beginning? ” Even his 
voice was not attractive when he laughed like that. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 15 

“ Mrs. Smith at No. 10 calls herself a Calvinist,” 
said Mrs. Darling, waiving the imputation. “ No, I 
don’t hold with such things myself. Not that I’d do 
away with hell — especially for men. It takes such a 
lot of damnation held over them to keep them 
straight ! ” 

Guy’s laugh was checked this time by the appear- 
ance of Beauty herself, coming into the room with a 
parcel of clean linen to be taken home. She must have 
heard her foster-mother’s final sentence, but she 
was probably used to such sentiments, for her round, 
childish face did not alter at all. She was going 
to retreat with her burden, as she generally did out 
of the artist’s presence, when he caught her by the 
arm. 

“ Here, little one, I’ve been asking your mother if 
you may climb into the apple-tree to put some life into 
my picture for me,” he said carelessly. “ I want a 
figure to paint. It needn’t interfere with her lessons, 
Mrs. Darling — hasn’t she a half holiday on Satur- 
day?” 

Taken by storm like this, Mrs. Darling found her- 
self somehow in the position of having already given 
her consent, but she made the situation as little at- 
tractive as possible by telling Beauty to “ make herself 
useful ” as she could to Mr. Guy, and warning her that 
she must keep very still and not fidget as she did in 
class or at church. The girl was really not at all 
anxious to waste her holiday in such tedious recrea- 
tion, and Mrs. Darling’s scruples were further lulled 
to rest by her foster-child’s uncomplimentary criticism 
on the “ loony old dauber ” who wanted her to stick 
up in a tree like a silly monkey for his rotten picture ! 


16 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


(It must be borne in mind that Beauty was cross at 
missing the chance of a ride on another girl’s bicycle 
that particular afternoon.) 

Something of her disaffection was plainly visible on 
the child’s face as she sulkily took up her position in 
the tree, her feet dangling ludicrously, every angle of 
her body a witness to ill-temper. The straight deli- 
cate brows were half an inch lower than usual above 
the dark blue eyes that stared straight over the artist’s 
head to a distant prospect of cabbages and potatoes on 
the allotment ground. He looked at the cross little 
face deliberately, and then he rose and sauntered 
leisurely up to the tree where she sat. 

For a minute or two he stood and studied her out of 
his narrowed dark eyes. Beauty shrank instinctively 
from the sudden nearness of his face thrust closer to 
her among the quivering apple blossoms, and thought 
anew how ugly he was, with a very natural indigna- 
tion. Had he been a young man, or more attractive, 
there would have been some consolation in this posing 
for her picture. But somehow the thin, battered face, 
so full of lines that wrote a story of a life she could 
not read, made her feel that she was only a very small 
accessory — a figure to give life to his picture. There 
was nothing more flattering to be hoped from the sit- 
uation than that. His hair was much greyer, too, in 
the betraying sunlight than she had even thought, and 
the large rusty moustache that hid his mouth was 
neither trimmed nor waxed. Beauty wriggled in the 
gnarled old boughs, bringing down a shower of petals 
from the passing flowers, and wished that he would go 
away. 

Suddenly he began to speak in a voice that lost none 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 17 

of its music for the ripple of laughter through the 
words. 

“ How naughty to shake all the blossom down and 
spoil the picture ! Is she a very cross baby, and didn’t 
she want to sit in a nasty old tree and waste her holi- 
day ? Poor Beauty ! What a shame ! ” 

He took hold of her by her elbows as he spoke, and 
moved her into a more favourable position. The 
girl’s muscles relaxed under the sound of his voice, and 
she unconsciously fell more into the pose he wanted. 
His hands still touched her, however, pulling her frock 
here and there and arranging her thick soft hair. 
There was something very practised in those hands, 
though they were knotted and heavily veined. Sud- 
denly the girl perceived that she was being coaxed, and 
a little dimple showed at the corner of her red mouth, 
while her brows went back into their rightful place. 
He was elderly and plain to her physical vision, but 
his hands told her that he was a man. 

“ It seems so silly, Mr. Guy ! ” 

“ Wait till you see what I make of you. There, 
that’s better. I’m only going to get the outlines 
to-day, and the play of light on the apple blossom — 
I mustn’t lose the apple blossom, it falls so quickly. 
Don’t move for a few minutes, there’s a good child.” 

He did not really keep her very long, partly because 
he did not want her attitude to get strained, partly be- 
cause he had got all he could get out of that first sit- 
ting. Beauty’s dark skirt would not do — he would 
make her wear white next time ; and her brown shoes 
and stockings would not do at all, but he did not sug- 
gest the little bare feet and legs he wanted, on this 
occasion. Trevor Guy went softly, with the panther’s 


18 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


tread, and lured his prey into the trap long before he 
made his spring. When the first sitting was over he 
went up to the apple-tree again and leaned his arms 
on the girl’s lap, looking closely into her face as if to 
study her. 

“There, that’s all I want of you at present. Not 
so very bad, was it? ” 

“Is it done? May I see it?” she said naively. 
“ It’s almost as quick as a photograph ! ” 

“ There is nothing to see — nothing that you could 
see, anyway. I’ve got it all here ! ” He touched his 
forehead and smiled at her a little, never moving his 
eyes from her face. 

“ Oh ! ” said Beauty, rather disappointed. “ I 
thought you couldn’t have done much.” 

“ I shall do more to-morrow.” 

“ I can’t come to-morrow — mother wouldn’t let me 
sit up here on Sunday ! ” 

“ I don’t want you. I am going to put in some 
work without a model. But if you can give me half 
an hour on Monday after you get home from school, 
I’ll show you what it’s going to be like wher\ it’s fin- 
ished.” 

“ Yes, I dare say I could get off early Monday.” 

He did not speak for a minute, but stood where he 
was, looking steadily into her face. Beauty liked the 
feeling of his arms resting on her without knowing 
why. Her sensations with regard to the opposite sex 
were at present limited to walking arm-in-arm with a 
young man from the grocer’s shop and being kissed by 
a younger boy in the dark one night coming back from 
some small festivity. Neither of these incidents had 
affected her beyond a flattered sense of her own attrac- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 19 

tions. That the attraction could come from the man 
was suddenly revealed to her with the thrill of a new 
experience. 

“ I am going to lift you down, or you will lose me 
some more apple blossom,” said Trevor Guy quietly. 
His expressive hands closed on her waist and knees 
and talked namelessly to her as he swung her out of 
the branches. The movement was so deft that hardly 
a petal was shaken down, but Beauty closed her eyes 
for a second for the stolen pleasure of a new sense, 
and let her head drop gently back against his shoul- 
der. Guy was wearing an old suit of heather tweed, 
and the faint musky scent that hangs about that ma- 
terial was woven into all Beauty’s after memories of 
the moment. For it was the indefinite subtlety of her 
own emotions that she enjoyed, and nothing more tan- 
gible. If he had kissed her she would have been 
rather disgusted and a little guilty, for though there 
was no reason why he should not lift her down from 
the apple-tree to save shaking the blossom, there was 
the hackneyed danger of a kiss, and mother would 
have been angry suppose she had witnessed it from the 
back-door. But Guy did nothing of the sort. He 
held her quite still against him for a moment, letting 
her feel the reality of his arms, and then set her lightly 
on the ground. 

“ I want you to wear a white skirt next time,” he 
said quietly. “ This is too dark.” 

Beauty did not answer. She turned and ran away 
into the house. And then for the first time the man 
let his smile have full play. 

There were no palliating circumstances about Tre- 
vor Guy. He came of a good family who had gradu- 


20 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

ally ceased to hold any communication with him on 
account of the life that he led, and the breach was 
maintained with bitterness on both sides, but with 
more reason on theirs. From the ateliers of Paris to 
the slums of Soho there was no phase of Bohemian 
life that Trevor had not tried, and from which he had 
not emerged a trifle more wearied and vicious. He 
possessed that licence for self-indulgence called a 
“ temperament ” by its owners, and a palate that had 
become deadened with full flavours. If he had 
worked he might have kept his head above water ; but 
his inspirations were erratic, and his productions so 
uneven that he spoiled his own market. Sometimes 
by a stroke of luck he had money, but more often he 
lived from hand to mouth ; and he knew the degrada- 
tion of doss-houses, and had made clever sketches of 
gaol — from the inside. It was due to the chance sale 
of his sketch of Merton Abbey that he did not leave 
Mrs. Darling’s cottage with the rent unpaid; not that 
he meant to cheat her, but that if he had not the money 
he did not pay — that was all. On the whole he was 
glad to be able to fulfil his obligations, for he rather 
liked Mary Darling. Her stanch self-respect and 
her philosophical acceptance of life as a disadvan- 
tageous thing struck him as intensely humorous — the 
more so as she was quite without that quality in her- 
self. He liked talking to her, and would wander into 
the kitchen after the light failed him for painting, and 
sit on the edge of the table to discuss politics or re- 
ligion or illness with her, while she wrung out her 
linen or cooked the supper. Illness was her special 
subject. Like all her class, she revelled in descrip- 
tions of disease, and spared him no details of any case 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 21 


that had come within her personal experience. Guy 
would hug himself in his long arms and rock with 
silent laughter while she repeated the blunt truths she 
had told her relations about their mortal bodies, 
or moralised on the ailments to which they were 
liable. 

“ I’m stronger since I had my children,” she wound 
up on one occasion. “ I often think it’s very hard on 
ladies in your position, sir. If they don’t happen to 
marry they’re sure to suffer for want of it — it’s 
nature ! ” 

Trevor Guy’s dark eyes narrowed to two slits, and 
the wrinkles in his face made him rather diabolic in his 
amusement. “Yes, it’s nature!” he said in that de- 
lightful voice that seemed to excuse so much, both in 
himself and others. “And who can blame them?” 

Mrs. Darling did not answer, but she pursed her 
lips. It seemed probable that she did blame humanity 
for the rights of nature, even while acknowledging 
them. Guy wondered if she often moralised in the 
same strain to her foster-daughter. . . . 

Beauty wore the white skirt the next time she sat for 
him in the apple-tree, and this time she did not pout or 
sulk. Indeed, she was docilely ready to take whatever 
pose he wished, and to stay away from such distrac- 
tions as were offered by the school recreation-ground. 
He knew perfectly well that she was half disturbed 
and half-looking forward to the moment when he 
should touch her, or lift her from the tree, with each 
restless movement that she made during the sitting, 
and it amused him to torture her. His mere presence 
was a kind of irritation, though she did not understand 
it. The man’s mind was like an evil odour; it im- 


22 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


pregnated the air before normally healthy people were 
aware of it, and then they shrank from the poison. 

Trevor Guy liked the sensation that Beauty gave him 
in his turn, without deliberately trying to do her any 
harm. His emotions were so jaded that it required 
something as new and unshadowed as the child-beauty 
of her face to stimulate them, but he really possessed 
that gift of imagination that can enjoy as much by 
sight as by touch. Her story interested him too, as 
a possible development of unknown tendencies and in- 
heritance, and Mrs. Darling’s blunt assertion that you 
could not make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear con- 
firmed the vague feeling that a baby left on a doorstep 
was predestined to evil. Poor little “ come-by- 
chance ! ” the froth tossed up by unbridled passion ! 
Men like Trevor Guy think by habit to evil ends. But 
he planned no seduction; it was neither worth while 
nor feasible in such guardianship as Mary Darling’s. 
She was strict with her girl, for when the poor are 
respectable they are far more so than any other class, 
more rigid in their views, and more unforgiving. 
Trevor Guy was not a man who made his opportuni- 
ties; but he waited for them. In due course he had 
asked Mrs. Darling if her little girl might clean his 
palette — he would show her how — and the woman 
promptly consented, as he expected. The more tasks 
he exacted from Beauty, the better she was satisfied. 
She called the girl pleasure-loving and idle, and indus- 
try was one of her own virtues. Beauty learned to 
scrape palettes and to do other odd jobs that took her in 
and out of the painter’s room, even while he was at 
work, and he worked there at times because of the 
“ north light.” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 23 

Then there came a wet day when Beauty returned 
early from school, there being no games to detain her, 
and Mrs. Darling had gone to see a neighbour. Guy 
suggested to the girl that she should give him a sitting 
indoors, up in his attic, and posed her on an impro- 
vised pile of boxes and a chair, leaving the door of the 
room wide open to the public should anyone choose to 
see. It was very still in the house, for the laundry- 
help was at her work in the scullery far below, and only 
the patter of the rain broke the oppressive silence. 
Guy stood at his easel working hard at the picture, 
which even to his model’s eyes was assuming a definite 
reflection of the apple-tree and the blue sky and her 
own fairness; Beauty sat on her precarious seat, and 
her whole body tingled with apprehension. He had 
hardly touched her since the first sitting, and had de- 
nied her the subtle enjoyment of the feeling in his 
hands. Guy knew the power that lay in his long vig- 
orous fingers as well as any woman who had learned 
their peculiar language. They spoke for him when 
words became unwarrantable. 

As he worked he began to sing, a low crooning song 
that was at first hardly more than a murmur, and 
mingled pleasantly with the rain. But after a time 
the notes became louder and firmer, and though she 
did not know it, Beauty was treated to a musical feast 
that was not granted to very many. Guy’s voice was 
not powerful enough to fill even a fair-sized concert 
hall — for which reason he had never turned it to 
account — but of its kind it was as nearly divine as a 
human gift can be, and that he was so very far re- 
moved from all divinity could not alter its quality. 
He was singing the “ Songs of Araby,” and Beauty 


24 the career of beauty darling 

listened, only half taking in the words but drifting with 
the sweetness of the melody : — 

“To cheat thee of a sigh — 

Or charm thee to a tear ! ” 

Guy took the high note like an artist, and, a little 
stirred by his own achievement, laid down his brush. 

“ You may rest now,” he said quietly, and the music 
seemed to run on in the words. “ You are getting 
stiff, and the attitude is no good to me. Go to the win- 
dow and see if it is still raining. The light seems to 
be getting worse.” 

Beauty dropped down from her perch, and walked 
across to the window on the further side of the room 
mechanically. She had to pass the easel to do so, and 
unknown to herself drew away from him as from 
something to be avoided. The painter saw and smiled 
a little dangerously, as a wild beast might bare its 
gums if flicked with a whip. 

“ It’s still raining,” said Beauty at the window, look- 
ing down into the narrow lane where Guy had first 
turned aside from the highroad and seen her. 
“ Mother will get wet if she — ” 

The sentence broke off short. Guy had come up 
behind her noiselessly. He was -accustomed to stand 
behind his victims where they could not see his face, 
and where he could use his voice and hands. He was 
again humming the final lines of his song: — 

“And all my song shall strive to wake 
Sweet wonder in thine eyes ! ” — 

and his fingers spoke to Beauty’s inner consciousness 
as they rested on her shoulders. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 25 

“ Don’t cry out ! ” he warned her. Then he lifted 
her chin and, holding her in a vice, kissed her roughly 
— that unconscious shrinking from him as she passed 
the easel had enraged him, so that he wanted to punish 
her more than to please himself. The ragged mous- 
tache against her smooth face made her wince, and his 
cruel lips bruised her own; but there was no evading 
or denying his purpose, and she had her first lesson 
whether she would or no. 

“ You must pay for being Beauty Darling/’ he told 
her coarsely, before he let her go. “ Pay, and pay, 
and pay again ! There is no escape from men for such 
as you.” 

And Beauty stumbled out of the room, half crying, 
as if a curse had indeed been pronounced upon her. 


CHAPTER II 


T\yTRS. DARLING was a person of property as con- 
■*-*-*■ trasted with her neighbours, for she had a small 
annuity besides the laundry work. This had been 
secured to her by an uncle in the greengrocery trade 
who had made a little money, and, distrusting the 
capacity of woman as regards investment, had had the 
forethought to arrange that Mary Darling should have 
a competence for her lifetime at least. Her husband 
and children being all dead, it was really a reasonable 
project for the widow; but she had nothing to leave, 
which aggravated her relations, no matter what might 
be their own monetary position. Of Mary Darling’s 
foster-daughter and her future nobody took much ac- 
count — not even the woman herself, who, with the 
philosophy of her kind, supposed that Beauty would 
“ do ” somehow after her death. She had at least 
brought the girl up in decency and self-respect accord- 
ing to her own methods, and intended to further equip 
her for the battle of life by putting her into trade or 
service of some sort when she left school. 

Mrs. Darling undertook the laundry work to render 
herself a little more independent, and because (though 
she did not recognize this fact)' work of some sort 
was a necessity to her. It was her inherited instinct, 
and she bitterly resented the fact that it did not ap- 
pear to be Beauty’s. Mrs. Darling’s washing ’was an 
irregular thing, only undertaken for certain old ladies 
26 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 27 

who still lived in that dilapidated neighbourhood and 
could afford to pay for their fine linen being properly 
washed and got up by hand. With the thoroughness 
of her nature, Mrs. Darling was an artist at her wash- 
ing-tub and ironing-table, and saw to it that Beauty 
did her portion of the work thoroughly also. She 
charged heavy prices compared to the big steam laun- 
dries of the South of London, or even those of her 
neighbours who undertook a “ few families,” and made 
up for their reasonable charges by what they lost or 
stole ; but Mary Darling’s goffering and pressing was 
of a kind that deserves payment. 

Beauty would have preferred her foster-mother to 
give up the laundry and take to needlework if she 
must augment her tiny income, even though it meant 
doing without some of the necessities of their narrow 
life. The girl was idle, in Mrs. Darling’s phrase, in 
so far as she disliked the physical toil and aching back 
that went with the ironing, but she really did not mind 
needlework, and would have dawdled and fussed over 
anything pretty that it fell to her lot to make. Furth- 
ermore, the laundry was a trifle humiliating. At 
school Beauty found herself amongst the daughters of 
small tradesmen, clerks, men employed in any respecta- 
ble position, and whose income was sufficiently assured 
to allow them to pay the nominal fees of the old Foun- 
dation. Such institutions have been mostly done away 
with now that the County Council’s revolutionary pro- 
ceedings have brought Secondary Schools within the 
reach of the lower middle class; but during the days 
of Beauty Darling’s educational period to pay even 
a small sum gave the scholar a superior position to 
that of the Board School, and it was due to Mrs, 


28 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


Darling’s sense of self-respect that the girl was asso- 
ciated with those rather above her in station instead 
of the children of labouring men. It was not pleas- 
ant, however, to be met by Bertha or Violet carrying 
home a parcel of fine linen whose shape and size was 
undisguisable. Snobbishness is just as painful in de- 
tail as in bulk, and the lady who pays a duchess for 
introductions into a higher sphere than her own suffers 
no keener humiliations than poor Beauty on the up- 
ward way. She hated it being known that she helped 
Mrs. Darling with the washing when at home, and if 
she could possibly arrange for the laundry-help to 
carry home the clothes, she would ; but Mrs. Darling’s 
firm rule was seldom to be circumvented or avoided, 
and Beauty did as she was told. 

The world of school was the only refining influence 
in Beauty’s life, and was on the whole a disturbing 
and warring experience. If her schoolfellows were 
in a slightly better position, her teachers were of a 
grade still farther above her, and their example tended 
to teach the girls to speak correctly, and even encour- 
aged them to think ; but in their own homes these ad- 
vantages were laughed at as “ affectation,” and as like 
as not mimicked by those who at the bottom of their 
hearts resented their own shortcomings. “ My fa- 
ther and mother spoke good enough for me, and I 
ought to speak good enough for you ” was the par- 
ents’ attitude, and for very discomfort the girls gradu- 
ally adopted those two manners and languages that 
belonged separately to the school and to their homes. 
The mistress at the head of the Wandlebridge School 
happened to be an exceptional woman, with the cour- 
age of a pioneer and the faith of an early Christian. 


THE CAREER OE BEAUTY DARLING 29 


She believed in the mystery called Girl, and laboured 
with the earnestness of an enthusiast to develop the un- 
promising material passed through her hands. Fur- 
thermore, she was before her time, an educationist of 
the modern type, and — as far as might be with the tra- 
ditions of her Foundation — she taught after the new 
method, which imparts knowledge so diffusedly that 
the subject hardly knows she is being taught and im- 
bibes information whether she will or no, as she draws 
in the oxygen of the air. At fourteen Beauty Darling 
was probably as well grounded in modern geography, 
history, arithmetic, and general information, as many 
girls in the Secondary Schools of to-day; but she held 
her knowledge mechanically, as did many of her 
schoolmates, and it was caducous and would fall from 
her during her passage through the world, save as it 
might remain in her trained memory. Where such 
teaching falls upon fruitful soil it produces wonderful 
results, and the public is just beginning to congratulate 
itself upon the advance of education and the chances 
so eagerly snatched by all classes; but where the soil 
is not fruitful it is really no better than the old methods 
of forcing the three R’s into a child’s mind by sheer 
repetition. The head mistress of Wandlebridge School 
knew this as no one else could do, with patient despair. 
But she gave her girls their chances nevertheless, with- 
out bias or favour. 

There were children younger than Beauty Darling 
in the same school who had ambitions to be teachers 
themselves, or developed a talent for some skilled work 
that would ensure them a future ; but Beauty was not 
one of these by instinct or inclination. What could 
be done with such a girl ? She was a docile and rather 


30 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

likeable child, with a certain fastidiousness of habit 
— soignee, as the French say — and not over-conceited 
considering her looks. But she had neither the initia- 
tive, nor the desire to push herself to the front, that 
would discount disagreeable obstacles. She liked ap- 
preciation, but it must not be hard to win, and she liked 
prettiness, but had not even the mercantile brain that 
sees in it an asset. 

“ If Beauty Darling had been the daughter of rich 
people,” said Beauty’s schoolmistress shrewdly, “ she 
would have done very well, and gone through life 
creditably if not brilliantly. She would have been put 
in a glass case, practically speaking, and kept there to 
be admired — which is plainly what the gods intended, 
since they made her to be looked at! But her very 
suitability for that sort of life will be her drawback in 
the working classes. What is one to do with such a 
girl? The best I can hope is that she will marry a 
decent tradesman while still too young to get into dif- 
ficulties, and settle down to attracting customers to the 
shop and having pretty children ! ” 

Beauty’s own ambition, as Trevor Guy had already 
discovered, was to go on the stage. But it was not 
the stage where one showed one’s legs for an adver- 
tisement of goods to sell, the possible advantages to 
be gained thereby not having been suggested to her. 
She had lived a guarded life, considering her position, 
and her friends had been drawn from decent working 
families. Beauty took her ambition rather seriously, 
and imagined herself in melodrama, a persecuted hero- 
ine in a white gown with her hair hanging down, and 
a villain hunting her round the stage until the clean- 
shaven hero married her in the last act. This idea was 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 31 

drawn from the one or two occasions on which she 
had been to the theatre at Balham with a party of other 
girls, who had “ Oh’d ! ” and “ Ah’d ! ” with very 
youthful enjoyment during the progress of the play. 
She did not care about Musical Comedy — it was on 
a level with pantomime, and suitable for kids. Be- 
sides, it had no serious love interest. Guy drew all 
this from her with intense amusement during the sit- 
tings, and gave her bad advice which she disregarded, 
but which nevertheless sank into her mind and lay 
there dormant. He understood her in a manner better 
than anyone (her schoolmistress not excluded) had 
done in her little life, because he experimented on her 
temperament, made allowances for possible traits, and 
did indeed discover much that had lain hidden even 
from Beauty herself. 

“ When you really want to go on the stage, Beauty,” 
he said, with a quiet acceptance of such a destiny for 
her that made her feel rather frightened, “ you are to 
go to Edgar Allonby — do you hear ? Edgar Allonby, 
of Allonby’s Theatre. Don’t forget the name. And 
don’t dress yourself up. Go exactly as you are 
now.” 

Beauty was wearing the plain white shirt and dark 
skirt in which she went to school, where it was a rule 
that no girl should wear a blouse without a collar, 
cheap lace, or false beads. Of course many of the girls 
reverted to these forbidden glories in their own homes, 
but Mrs. Darling being set against “ finery,” Beauty 
was obliged to sigh in vain for the time when she 
might wear her hair puffed out to hideous excrescences, 
and tawdry apparel from the Balham Road shops. 
Her wide-brimmed sailor hat with the school ribbon 


32 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

she would gladly have exchanged for a “ creation ” 
piled with cheap flowers and ribbons, and priced three 
and elevenpence-half penny. But in spite of a per- 
verted taste she knew how to put on her clothes, and 
was half contented to wear her hair down. No other 
style could so well have suited the blooming child face 
as those rich thick curls that needed no Hinde’s pins 
and fell loosely about her forehead and onto her neck. 
Beauty’s hair never grew long, but it was thick and 
soft and full of life and colour, with a natural spring 
from her head where she parted it. Trevor Guy’s sug- 
gestion that she should present herself to any theat- 
rical manager as she looked at school, however, did not 
fall in at all with her preconceived notions, any more 
than that she should go to the man whose name was 
identified with the house where Musical Comedy 
reigned supreme. 

“ You don’t know anything about it, Mr. Guy ! ” 
said Beauty with a toss of her curly head. “ I shall 
ask Lucy Dale to help me when I really do mean to 
go!” 

Lucy Dale was an older girl in the school, whose 
dramatic talent had been so undeniable that no oppo- 
sition at home or dissuasion at school could keep her 
off the stage. But to tell the truth the head mistress 
had done little dissuasion beyond warning the pupil of 
the hard work ahead of her, for she believed in talent 
finding its bent, and Lucy was by no means the kind 
of girl who goes into the ranks of the chorus and re- 
mains there to make dubious history. Hard work 
could not frighten Lucy out of her profession. She 
was a born elocutionist, and content to work her way 
up to her ideal of Sheakespeare and learn by patient 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 33 

drudgery. She had been two years in the provinces 
and suburbs of London now, and was beginning to 
be recognized in decent companies as at least hard- 
working and reliable. Beauty had liked the glamour 
of knowing that Lucy was “ on the stage,” and hear- 
ing of her progress up to speaking a line or so by 
great good luck when another girl was ill; but she 
would not at all have liked the monotony, discourage- 
ment, and real struggle that Lucy had undergone. 
Beauty Darling was an amateur in all things, and only 
the stress of life could make her a professional. 

Trevor Guy made one of his wry faces at Lucy’s 
name. He had heard all about her, and revolted from 
the practical training of her “ going on the stage ” 
with an antagonism that was inherent. Art to Guy was 
either a blaze of erratic genius, or a perfectly meretri- 
cious chance of luck. He had never worked, himself, 
and his cynicism led him to believe that easier results 
might be obtained by fooling the public than by com- 
peting honestly for its favour. His picture of Beauty 
Darling was to be a very good instance of this, though 
his talent (and he had, unfortunately, a very decided 
talent) raised it from the merely pretty into a promise 
of something much better. There was the breath of 
Spring in his apple blossom, and all the possibilities 
of youth in the figure of Beauty and her exquisite 
face. But he meant to make of it merely a “ pretty 
picture ” to catch the public eye, and perhaps gain him 
a vogue in the production of such coloured “ pot-boil- 
ers.” He trusted to the real beauty of the child’s face 
and the pleasant impression left by the symbol of 
“ Spring ” on people’s minds, to earn him his ill-gotten 
gains, and snapped his fingers at the possibility of a 


34 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

hint of inspiration in his work having as much to do 
with his success as a charming subject. 

“ Don't be a little fool. Beauty ! ” he advised her 
scoffingly. “ You are not Lucy Dale, even if she has 
gained one inch of the way by hard work where you 
might gain a yard by looking pretty. Your face is 
your fortune, Beauty — you don’t want to trouble 
about your brains.” 

He walked across the room, and turned the face he 
praised a little more to the light, altering her pose by 
a finger under her round chin. The girl instinctively 
raised her face for the magnetic touch, and her eyes 
grew dreamy with the dazed look of an animal that is 
caressed. Then she shrank a little, afraid that he 
was going to kiss her — but he seldom did that. She 
could never bear his kisses, though now and then he 
made her endure them, as much for the pleasure of 
doing something she did not like as from any desire on 
his own part. The power he exercised over Beauty 
was like an unclean fascination, a thing that made her 
half sick to contemplate and half drugged to experi- 
ence. She longed for the touch of his hands, young 
as she was, but the mere look of him — gaunt, and dis- 
sipated, and middle-aged — revolted her. Perhaps it 
was a form of hypnotism, since she never breathed a 
word either to Mrs. Darling or her schoolmistress, or 
indeed her own friends, of what went on between her 
and Trevor Guy. She half dreaded and half longed 
for the time when he should go away, and the nearing 
completion of the picture made her breathe more freely. 
After all he had done her no harm that she could real- 
ize, and when he was gone there would be no necessity 
to betray herself to anybody. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 35 

The end came rather suddenly, and was an impulse, 
unexpected by either of them. It was hastened by a 
letter to Guy, who rarely received letters, informing 
him of the death of his father, and the division of 
property which would secure him a moderate but cer- 
tain income. Guy had been so long without “ visible 
means of subsistence ” that the idea of a certain re- 
spectability forced upon him was almost irksome. Yet 
it might be a relief in a few years, for he was not grow- 
ing any younger, and the money being in the hands of 
trustees it was nearly as safely doled out to him as 
Mrs. Darling’s annuity was to her. The letter also 
contained a small sum of money in advance, owing to 
the family’s experience of Trevor’s probable monetary 
condition. He did not read the daily papers, and had 
known nothing of his father’s lingering illness, and 
though the older man was over seventy, his graceless 
son had hardly expected to outlive him. He was 
neither particularly sorry nor glad at the demise, all 
family ties and affections having been broken long 
since — so much so, indeed, that the news would have 
taken much longer to reach him save for the agency of 
the very picture-dealer who had sold the sketch of Mer- 
ton on commission, and through whom he sometimes 
kept in touch with the outer world. 

Trevor pocketed the money, and said nothing about 
it to Mrs. Darling, to whom he paid his half-crown 
rent and said goodbye, leaving her not unrelieved at 
his departure, for her sister-in-law — that very wife 
who had accompanied poor Tom at Christmas — had 
unexpectedly come to spend a few days with her, and 
had been bundled into the room where “ mother only 
stored things,” in an improvised bed. Mrs. Darling’s 


3 6 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

hospitality was outraged, and she would be glad to put 
her visitor into Guy’s room as soon as he was gone. 
He did not realize, however, that the storeroom occu- 
pied by Aunt Carrie was next door to his own and that 
the partition was thin. 

There had been nothing to hear up to that last night, 
that was the irony of it, and Mrs. Emery might have 
listened all the hours of darkness if she had liked with 
no harm to anybody. But that night a door creaked, 
and there was a stealthy step, and then, once or twice, 
voices. 

Trevor Guy left early the next morning, for he 
wished to avoid the heat. The year had rounded into 
summer, and the middle of the day was more like 
July than May. He paid his rent and shook hands with 
Mrs. Darling, departing as he came with his pack on 
his shoulders. His sudden accession to comparative 
fortune had had no visible effect upon him, but he had 
given Beauty a sovereign and told her bluntly to keep 
it: she did not know when she might want money. 
The girl took it in a dazed fashion, and looked at him 
with the eyes of some inconsiderable animal already 
doomed to the wolf’s maw. But she slipped away from 
him as soon as possible — he had only called her to 
the door of his room — and Guy went down the nar- 
row staircase for the last time to make his farewell to 
his landlady. 

She was cooking the breakfast and offered him some 
before his start, but he smiled his restrained smile and 
shook his head. He preferred to get a cup of coffee at 
a stall on his way. 

“ I learned that habit in Paris,” he said, and his voice 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 37 

was none the less smooth for any deed of the night. 
“ Coffee and a roll are a good breakfast for a poor man, 
and cost less than tea and bacon ! ” 

“ Yes, it's hard on gentlemen like your sort,” agreed 
Mrs. Darling, with the frank criticism of her kind. 
“ Not in steady work or able to put anything by, I dare 
say, sir ! ” 

“ Oh, well, there’s always the Union for us, Mrs. 
Darling! The Guardians have a mission to look after 
such vagabonds as myself!” 

Mrs. Darling pursed up her lips. “ I don’t say but the 
Board does its best,” she said kindly, “ but if they saw 
all I’ve seen along of the Poor Law they’d smile the 
other side of their mouths ! There’s the Relief Funds 
after the war, too, going to all sorts of persons because 
they had a son or so killed. My mother-in-law, sir, 
that was content to live at home with her married 
daughter and help with, the children, she’s gone and 
married an old man on their two 4 compensations ’ 
money. And he’s eighty and she seventy-two ! ” 1 

“ It does sound as if they had been tempted into reck- 
lessness. But perhaps the .War Office hasn’t a mother- 
in-law! Are your sympathies with the Opposition, 
Mrs. Darling? ” 

“ Not particularly, sir. They’re all much of a 
muchness. I don’t care which side is in — it’s what 
they get done that touches us. Ah, Gladstone was the 
man for the poor ! He passed the Ballot Act, and did 
away with the duty on paper — gave us cheap reading 
and education, did Gladstone ! ” 

1 The time was some years before the Old Age Pensions, or 
Mrs. Darling might have made exactly the same comments with 
regard to them. 


3 8 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

Trevor Guy was willing to linger as a rule and to 
draw Mrs. Darling out, but this morning he looked a 
little weary, a little more dissipated, almost as if the 
fruits of evil tasted sour in his mouth. He turned 
away and walked out of the cottage just as Mrs. Emery 
came ponderously down the staircase and into the 
kitchen. Trevor Guy’s long stride was then taking him 
fast along the dusty road, though he did not appear to 
hurry, and he was soon but a speck upon the highway, 
and then out of sight and lost in the traffic. And 
whether he turned to right or left, or kept straight on to 
his original goal, the Pool of London, does not matter. 
For the nonce he was gone out of Beauty Darling’s life 
like an evil dream. 

Mrs. Emery sat down heavily in a chair by the 
breakfast table — the meal was eaten in the kitchen for 
convenience — and fanned herself with her handker- 
chief ostentatiously, as if the heat even at this early 
hour oppressed her or she had a weight on her mind. 
She was a stout woman, and the literal interpretation 
of the movement occurred to her sister-in-law. 

“ I’m afraid you’ve had a hot night, Carrie. But 
you can have Tom’s room now Mr. Guy has gone. 
Beauty will get it to rights before she goes off to 
school.” 

Mrs. Emery coughed. “ It’s true I was ’ot,” she 
said. “ And I didn’t sleep much — but that’s no won- 
der. So that man’s gone?” 

“ Yes, well out of the way. I must say I’ll be glad 
to have my house my own again, though he was little 
trouble saving the mess of his paints. But I don’t care 
about a lodger.” 

“ No,” said Mrs. Emery gloomily. “ I should say 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 39 

he was well gone, too! With that girl of yours you 
ought to be careful, Mary.” 

“ Beauty’s all right at present — so long as no no- 
tions are put into her silly head ! ” said Mrs. Darling 
shortly. “ In a year or so it’ll be different.” She 
knew that there were two things that her relations re- 
sented above all cause for them — her annuity and her 
adoption of a daughter. Poor Beauty had done very 
little that was right in their eyes since babyhood, and 
her pretty face was an aggravation of the offence of 
her small existence. To say truth, the girl had not 
taken much trouble to ingratiate herself with them 
either. She was inclined to be pert to their censure, 
and tossed her fair head with the assurance that they 
might wish her out of the way as much as they 
pleased, but “ mother ” was on her side, and their 
enmity mattered very little. 

“ There’s no fear of my putting notions into her 
head — they’re there already fast enough ! ” said Mrs. 
Emery resentfully. “ I don’t like to speak no evil 
of anyone, Mary, but what’s bred in the bone will out 
in the blood, as you’ve many times admitted. What 
can you expect of a child that comes off a doorstep of 
disreputable parents but ingratitude and loose ways? 
Well, I say nothing! If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I’m 
glad the man’s gone out of your house anyway ! ” said 
Mrs. Emery, cutting a crust off the loaf with vicious 
enjoyment. 

“ What do you mean ? ” demanded Mrs. Darling, 
and for the first time there was some glimmer of ap- 
prehension in her. Although she knew that Mrs. 
Emery and the rest of her connexions had many times 
tried to make the worst of Beauty without any real 


40 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

cause, the reference to the girl’s parentage told. She 
had so often, herself, blamed any small misdemean- 
ours to some hereditary taint. “ You’d better tell me 
straight out if you know anything, Carrie,” she went 
on firmly, putting the cover back over the bacon. “ It’s 
no kindness to the girl to keep it back.” 

Mrs. Emery wanted her breakfast, and was huffed 
by the challenge of her sister-in-law’s tone. She flung 
her accusation out at once, seeing that until the dis- 
cussion was over she would get no further served. 

“Well, you ask me if I slep’. No, I didn't sleep, 
and it wasn’t the heat. There was a door creaking, 
and then steps, and then voices in the next room — his 
room. And if you like such goings on in your house, 
Mary, I’ve no more to say.” 

Mrs. Darling’s hard face had flushed to a dull crim- 
son, and the veins on her temple swelled. Guy’s 
shrewd guess that she was of apoplectic habit when 
he first saw her seemed justified. But she curbed her 
temper, and only spoke sharply. 

“ You’ve nothing to go on but fancy, Carrie Emery, 
and you’re taking the girl’s character away because 
you think you heard noises — like as not the mice. 
I tell you she wouldn’t do such a thing — she wouldn’t 
dare! What more have you to go on? Did you get 
up and see if there was anything? ” 

“ No, I didn’t see her go into his room — ” Mrs. 
Emery was furious in her turn — “ but I heard enough. 
They was talking, leastways ’e was, — and then she 
begins to cry. They must have been the other side the 
wall, just close to my head. I could hear them as 
plain as I hear you — ” 

But there was nothing to hear, for Mrs. Darling 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 41 

was speechless. She sprang up from her seat at the 
table and went upstairs, her face a still darker red. 
Beauty was putting Guy’s room to rights before she 
came down to breakfast, for she must start for school 
immediately afterwards. The dazed look was still in 
her eyes, but it darkened to sudden active fear, and 
she gave a sharp cry as her foster-mother caught her 
by the arm and swung her round to face her. 

Mrs. Darling did not waste time. She was con- 
vinced of the child’s guilt before she gave her a chance 
to deny, and when she did the denial went for nothing. 
She worked herself up into the heat of her passion as 
she talked, sparing the girl nothing, and accusing her 
in such terms as only the poor use, of her vileness. 
When Beauty burst out with trembling denials she al- 
most struck her. The girl’s very immaturity seemed 
to aggravate her into plainer speaking than if she had 
come to her full womanhood, as it was certainly the 
more shocking. The storm of words beat about the 
child’s bewildered brain, terrifying her to madness, 
and she contradicted wildly, working herself up in 
her turn. Beauty lied through fear, when she might 
have been honest through preference. She had had 
nothing to do with Guy, she sobbed — she had never 
been near him — it was all a dirty shame that she 
should be accused of such things — 

But her foster-mother had reached the acme of her 
wrath. “ You little harlot! ” she stormed. “ I’ll turn 
you out into the streets from which I took you. I’ve 
taught you to be respectable like my own daughters, 
and you’ve disgraced yourself and me. You wait! 
I’ll give you such a beating as you won’t forget — ” 
Beauty turned and fled. She did not see the woman 


42 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

gasp and stagger, or fall sideways on the bed — that 
bed! — but with the madness of fear full upon her 
she raced to her own room, banged the door and locked 
it. With trembling hands she gathered up most of 
her small wardrobe and pushed it into the “ pilgrim ” 
basket which was all her luggage did she go away for 
a holiday, and strapping it roughly, flung on her school 
hat She was panting with sobs, but not shedding 
many tears as yet. Some strain in the birth which 
Mrs. Darling flung in her teeth may have made her 
less fitted to face the crisis than a slower and more 
stolid girl might have been. Mrs. Darling’s own 
progeny would have burst out crying at once, but 
would not really have been so upset, and would cer- 
tainly have weathered the storm more philosophically. 
Beauty was only irresponsible with fright — the 
horror of last night, and the double horror of this 
morning’s discovery. 

She caught up the pilgrim basket in her hand — 
girls of her class are used to carrying heavier loads — 
unlocked the door and looked shrinkingly into the 
narrow passage. But there was no terrible wrath 
awaiting her there, and without staying to wonder 
why, or that no one had tried her door, she ran straight 
downstairs and out of the cottage. She had not had 
time to take all her trifling belongings with her — in- 
deed, she was too confused — but she had got the 
precious sovereign. That unhallowed gift, and two or 
three shillings given her by Mrs. Darling to make some 
small purchases for herself, was the only money she 
had. It was not an hour since Trevor Guy had told her 
that she never knew when she might need it, and al- 
ready it had come to pass. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 43 

As the girl ran out of the gate and a little way 
along the road the old horse omnibus that still runs 
through Wandlebridge lumbered along past her. She 
hailed it, glad of the escape, and swinging her basket 
up on to the conductor’s step, was passed on into the 
dusk of the inside. Hardly anyone had been pas- 
sing at the moment, and there was no one in the bus 
she happened to know. Beauty had “ covered her 
tracks ” as cleverly as if she had planned to do it. 


When Mrs. Emery grew tired of waiting for her 
breakfast she helped herself to cold bacon with a 
disapproving sniff and proceeded to eat it. It was 
not a successful breakfast, for the tea was overdrawn, 
and Mrs. Darling not returning she had no one to 
speak to. But she supposed that Beauty was “ catch- 
ing it ” upstairs, and was rather pleased at the pro- 
longed process. 

“ Serve her right, the little slut ! ” said Mrs. ‘Emery 
charitably. “If Mary had taken one of her own 
folks when she wanted to adopt a child this would 
never have happened. She’ll turn out a bad lot, I al- 
ways said so. And Mary’s beginning to know it, 
thank the Lord ! ” 

It is extraordinary the amount of gratitude that 
is offered to God for the works of the Devil. But 
Mrs. Emery was not a logician, and she was com- 
fortably aware of having killed two birds with one 
envious stone — unmasked the interloper, Beauty, and 
forced the retribution she desired upon her sister- 
in-law. Therefore she saw fit to offer up pious 
thanks, 

“ It’s a judgment on ’em both ! ” she said to her- 


44 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

self, buttering a third slice of bread, and watering the 
teapot. 

The judgment being considerably delayed, however, 
Mrs. Emery thought fit to toil slowly upstairs at last 
with the intention of administering poisoned beatitude 
— “ There, Mary, I’m sure that’s all said that can be 
said — and the ’arm being done we must hope for the 
best.” (She meant worst.) “And it’s bounden on 
you after all to think where she comes from, and I 
must say you’ve only yourself to look to!” (She 
would never have dared to say so to Mary Darling in 
reality, but the rehearsal was balm to her mind.) 
“As to you, miss — ” etc., her fancy playing round 
Beauty with her provoking face blurred by tears. 

By the time Mrs. Emery reached the upper landing 
she was a little frightened — the cottage was so very 
still. She had expected to find Mrs. Darling and her 
foster-daughter still vilifying each other, and carry- 
ing on a verbal warfare at least. What she did find 
was Mary Darling’s body fallen sideways on the un- 
made bed, — breathing stertorously, while further in- 
vestigations proved that Beauty was not in the house 
at all, and that her cupboards were half emptied and 
herself and her pilgrim basket gone. 

Mrs. Emery’s first highly coloured thought was that 
the girl had assaulted her foster-mother and half killed 
her, but common sense argued that a girl of Beauty’s 
age and small build would not have the least chance 
with a woman of Mrs. Darling's powerful physique, 
even if taken unawares, and when the doctor came he 
tersely pronounced it an apoplectic stroke, with no 
more explanation necessary than that Mrs. Darling 
had overtaxed herself in the early summer weather. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 45 

Mrs. Emery admitted to the woman having “ had 
words ” with her foster-daughter, who had behaved 
“ very bad, sir ! Enough to give anyone a fit, in- 
deed!” 

“ Very well,” said the doctor offhandedly, “ then 
you had better keep her away from Mrs. Darling as 
long as you can. She must not be excited or dis- 
turbed if she rallies, which I very much doubt at her 
age. Let the girl do the housework and you the 
nursing.” And he hurried away, having no time to 
waste in listening to the shortcomings of Mrs. Dar- 
ling’s “ girl.” 

Mrs. Emery did not explain that Beauty had run 
away. She took it for granted that the girl had gone 
to join her seducer, and was anxious to suppress such 
a story as long as possible from the neighbours, burn- 
ing with righteous indignation though she was. She 
honestly thought that Beauty had seen her foster- 
mother taken ill and had added callous ingratitude to 
her other sins by leaving her in her extremity and 
rushing off to Trevor Guy. But Mrs. Emery was a 
little uneasy in her conscience over her own part of 
the affair, and not averse to hushing it up for a while 
in case Mrs. Darling rallied. It would be time enough 
to confess to Beauty’s flight then. Therefore when 
inquiries came from the school as to the girl’s non- 
appearance, Mrs. Emery sent down a hurried message 
as to her sister-in-law’s illness, and left the head mis- 
tress to suppose that the girl’s presence was necessary 
at home. One or two further inquiries for Mrs. Dar- 
ling followed, but she was too respectable a person 
for Beauty’s mistresses to have the faintest suspicion 
of the girl coming to any harm, and Mrs. Emery car- 


46 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

ried on her little deception unmolested, nursing her 
sister-in-law faithfully, to do her justice, and keeping 
the laundry girl to help at times with the housework. 

Three weeks later Mary Darling died without ever 
having become fully conscious. Towards the end it 
seemed that she tried to speak, and there was a strange, 
earnest look in her eyes that Mrs. Emery did not much 
care to think about afterwards. Her speech had been 
unintelligible, and, after all, she might not have wished 
to see or hear of her foster-daughter again. Suppos- 
ing that she had been going to charge her sister-in- 
law to look after or mount guard over her, it would 
have been very awkward; even a message of forgive- 
ness would have involved seeking her out and an 
effort at reclaiming her, and Mrs. Emery did not feel 
at all inclined to do either. 

But by that time all trace of Beauty Darling had 
been lost in Wandlebridge, and so if Mrs. Emery had 
wished ever so honestly it would have required the aid 
of the police to find her. 


CHAPTER III 


T>EAUTY DARLING left the omnibus at Balham 
-■-* Station and took a ticket for Victoria. She was 
still so bruised and shaken in mind that she pursued 
her course mechanically, only certain of the fact that 
“ mother ” had turned her out into the street, and that 
she must get as far as possible from that vengeful 
figure. At the back of her mind — a long way back 
— there was the incredulous feeling that mother did 
not mean it, and that the only home she had ever 
known was not closed to her, whatever she had done. 
But she was really afraid of Mrs. Darling's physical 
violence, and had the impulse to flee for the present, 
until the immediate storm was overpast, and perhaps 
come back some day when time had changed passion 
to anxiety and she was half welcome as a repentant 
prodigal. It is a notable fact that the modern prod- 
igal always has a sneaking consciousness of his own 
effective figure, and looks upon the fatted calf as a 
perquisite bound to fall to him sometime. 

Beauty was not so ignorant or so lost as a country 
girl would have been in the same circumstances; but 
on the other hand she had not nearly the knowledge 
of London that the true Cockney has. Her experi- 
ence was somewhat limited, owing to Mrs. Darling’s 
careful up-bringing, but she was tolerably familiar 
with the suburbs south of the river. She was going 
to the real London, the London that runs from the 
47 


48 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

City to Kensington and from Regent’s Park to West- 
minster Bridge, because she had the blind instinct to 
find “ something to do ” there, her veritable market 
being the stage, as she had told Guy. And indeed, 
as she had little or nothing to offer except a pretty 
face and a neat body, it was not a bad selection. Even 
an artist’s model has to learn something in the pa- 
tient endurance of posing and keeping her position. 
The stage is less exacting in taking raw material for 
certain classes of production. 

There were only one or two people in the third- 
class carriage in which Beauty deposited herself and 
her basket, and they were mostly of the working class 
that catches the 8.30 and gets to business soon after 
nine. The men looked at the girl with a passing in- 
terest and some sympathy, for she was still sniffling 
and keeping back the tears with difficulty. She 
looked with her basket like a little schoolgirl going 
back to her tasks after a pleasant holiday, and crying 
at parting with kind friends; but she had got a cor- 
ner seat, and turned her shoulder to her neighbours, 
looking out of the window, so that nobody offered her 
open sympathy. 

Beauty had once or twice been to stay with some 
relations of Mrs. Darling’s in the country, and she and 
her foster-mother had taken excursions to the seaside. 
This was the child’s idea of travelling. But because 
on the last occasion they had had time to fit in between 
the suburban train that brought them to Victoria and 
the one that took them to Brighton, they had left their 
luggage in the cloak-room, and had had something to 
eat while waiting; this programme suggested itself to 
her mind mechanically, and without deliberate in- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 49 

tention she found herself at the cloak-room, handing 
her basket over to the clerk, and receiving the ticket 
in exchange. From the cloak-room she went to the 
ladies’ waiting-room and looked at herself in the 
glass there. She had not cried sufficiently to spoil 
her face, but it was paler and more woebegone than 
usual, and her heart sank at the thought of interview- 
ing a London Manager as she was, not even fortified 
by the knowledge of her best blouse and a hat with 
flowers on it ! It did seem hard luck, but in her hasty 
flight she had had no time to think of future exigen- 
cies, and was dressed as she would have gone to 
school, in a plain white shirt and dark skirt, and a 
sailor hat. It was a coincidence that she was going 
to attempt to see a theatrical Manager dressed exactly 
as Guy had told her to be; but certainly from no in- 
clination on her own part. Beauty took off the 
despised hat and shook out her curls, wishing she 
had a comb to put through them. She was by no 
means confident of success as she made her way out 
of the station into the busy streets. 

It was now past nine o’clock, and she was very 
hungry, for she had had no breakfast before her head- 
long flight. It was probably owing to the hour, and 
the numberless young men and girls setting out to 
their daily toil, that she had escaped being accosted, 
and had gone on her way unmolested, save for a pass- 
ing stare at her pretty face. She went into a bun- 
shop outside Victoria Station and had a cup of tea 
and a bun, hiding herself as much as possible in a 
distant corner of the shop. She was still in fear of 
being followed and brought back to justice, though 
she would have indignantly denied that she was doing 
4 


$o THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

any harm in running away. It had been forced upon 
her, in her own estimation, and she was merely doing 
the best she could for herself. Of Guy she never 
thought, save with shrinking horror. She had always 
been more or less afraid of him, and his influence over 
her was partly hypnotic. Far from wishing to seek 
him out and appeal to him, she was terrified at the 
idea of meeting him, and hardly dared to glance at 
the face of any tall man she passed. He had not told 
her where he was going, and she was thankful that 
she had no clue to his whereabouts. The terror and 
the shock for which he had been responsible, both 
directly and indirectly, had jarred the girl’s mind and 
left her with a feeling against men that was almost 
unreasoning. 

Beauty’s fare to London and her breakfast had only 
cost a shilling, and had left her with some silver be- 
sides the precious sovereign. It now came to the 
question of how she was to see the Manager of a the- 
atre and ask him to let her “ walk on ” until she was 
fit for something better. Lucy’s experiences helped 
her here, and she knew that this was the first step in 
the way she meant to tread. But it was too early — 
not more than ten o’clock — to hope to see a Manager. 
Even Beauty knew that. And so for the next half- 
hour she walked about the streets, a little disappointed 
in the shops until she reached the Buckingham Palace 
Road, where she sated her elementary little soul with 
the glories of Gorringe and the smaller milliners. 
Even this was educative, for she began to see that 
fashion was not limited to Balham, but rose to fairer 
heights elsewhere. If only she could have bought 
one of those flattened headgears (it was a year of 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 51 

“ soup-plate ” hats) and a long silk frock, she would 
have felt really grown up, and would have faced 
a Dramatic Academy with assurance! She caught 
sight of her own discontented little face under its 
plain straw headgear, and turned away with* more 
despondence over her own future than she had experi- 
enced yet. 

When it turned half-past ten Beauty took her fading 
courage in both hands and began to think of the best 
way of reaching Allonby’s. She was going to Allon- 
by’s because it was the name uppermost in her mind, 
having been so recently impressed on her by Guy. 
“ Go to Edgar Allonby at Allonby’s Theatre — don’t 
forget the name,” he said. If Beauty had known 
enough of London theatres to classify them as Com- 
edy, Drama, Melodrama, or Shakespeare, she would 
probably have chosen the Lyceum, her ideal being 
something of the “ Lass that Loved a Soldier ” vari- 
ety. But her ignorance limited her to the one theatre 
specially pointed out to her, and she did not even know 
the exact locality of that. If she asked anyone it 
might sound suspicious, and she shrank with horror 
from the beginning of inquiries that might end in her 
being reclaimed and sent home. She had managed so 
well so far, she thought, with youth’s own conceit. 
She could not be foiled now ! Then a passing hansom 
caught her eye, and her heart leapt. Beauty had 
never ridden in a hansom, as it chanced, and the child 
in her snatched eagerly at the treat of a ride and a 
new experience, while the extravagance became justi- 
fied in her mind by the bright idea that it would look 
more important and experienced if she arrived at the 
theatre in a cab. People who wanted to go on the 


52 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

stage always drove up to the theatre in a cab, of 
course. Beauty hailed the hansom, trembling with 
excitement, and the driver, after a minute’s hesitation, 
drew up at the curb. His suspicious stare changed to 
a smile of broad amusement as Beauty gave the des- 
tination. 

“ Will you take me to Allonby’s Theatre, please? ” 

“ All right,” said the cabman, a little more satisfied, 
for he thought she was one of the chorus girls late for 
rehearsal who had. been driven to the expedient of 
engaging him to get her there, and though he rather 
doubted his fare’s ability to pay, he good-humouredly 
took the risk. The traffic was thick that morning, 
and it took even a cab some twenty-five minutes to 
reach the great house in the Strand, while once or 
twice they were actually blocked, and Beauty looked 
out of the open front on the great gay world rolling 
past on its pleasurable business — it seemed pleas- 
urable to her in the youth of the season and her own 
eager vitality. The glitter and the brightness stimu- 
lated her, and the excitement of her own adventures 
made her heart beat and brought a flush to her face 
again. She felt so important as she got out of the 
cab and paid the driver his eighteenpence, though it 
left her only ninepence of her loose change; and as 
she walked into the great vestibule of the theatre her 
only pang was that she had not a long frock ! 

The cabman had taken her to the entrance of Al- 
lonby’s, and not to the stage-door. Beauty found her- 
self in what seemed a veritable palace to her inexpe- 
rienced eyes, and after a minute’s hesitation she 
walked up to the box-office and looked 'in at the clerk 
with her dark blue eyes shining under the black lashes. 


\ 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 53 

As a matter of fact she was beginning to be fright- 
ened, but there were only the rosy cheeks and the 
brilliant eyes to betray her. 

“ I want to see Mr. Edgar Allonby, please ! ” she 
said collectedly. 

The box-office clerk stared at her for a minute with 
the same amusement as the cab-driver. If she had 
not been so pretty and so absurdly young he would 
have dismissed her peremptorily, but as it was he saw 
lit to laugh. 

“Oh, do you!’’ he said. “Well, he doesn’t show 
round this side of the house, you know ! ” Then he 
called to another man in the office behind him, as if 
to attract his attention to something worth seeing. 
This person came forward languidly, stared in his 
turn, and then began to smile too. 

“ You had better go round to the stage-door,” he 
said. “ But you won’t find him at this hour of the 
morning ! ” 

“ I don’t know,” said the first man in a lower voice. 
“ I believe he came in a few minutes ago ; there’s a 
special rehearsal at eleven.” 

“ Oh well, she can go round and see. They won’t 
let her in without an appointment, I expect.” 

There followed a lower colloquy, with frequent 
glances at Beauty, who stood waiting with a sinking 
heart. It had seemed such a straight and easy thing 
to go to the theatre and ask for Mr. Allonby, and she 
had not realized that it was as easy to see Royalty as 
the great Manager. At last the man who had first 
spoken turned to her again. 

“What do you want to see Mr. Allonby about? 
Have you an appointment?” he said, still obviously 


54 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

amused. Beauty began to feel a little indignant, to 
realize that she was being treated like a child and no 
seriousness assigned to her. It was so grave a step 
in her own mind, so overwhelmingly important, 
that she could not tolerate trifling. The straight 
brows came down into a frown and the red lips tight- 
ened. 

“ I want to see Mr. Allonby on business — my own, 
and not yours ! ” she said, with the sharp repartee of 
the London schoolchild. “ Will you tell me where I 
can find him ? ” 

“ All right, Miss Saucy ! Go round to the stage- 
door — and get snubbed ! ” the clerk retorted in his 
turn. “ First turning on the right out of Burleigh 
Street.” 

Beauty tossed her curls and turned away. The en- 
counter had done her a good turn in that it had 
changed nervousness into anger. She was deter- 
mined to see Mr. Allonby now, with all her little mind, 
let the result be what it might. 

It took her some ten minutes to find the stage-door, 
having no experience of the mysterious way in which 
the backs of theatres open off many streets into unex- 
pected neighbourhoods. But having located it at last 
between an eating-house and a coal-bin in a narrow 
turning off Burleigh Street, she pushed it open with- 
out further ceremony, and found herself in a dark 
passage with an office on her right where a man was 
boiling a large kettle over a small fire, despite the 
warm day. He looked up as she entered, and stared 
as the booking-office clerk had done. 

“ Hulloa, what do you want? ” he said. 

“ I want to see Mr. Edgar Allonby ! ” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 55 

“ So do a good many people,” said the doorkeeper 
dryly. “ Have you an appointment ? ” 

Then Beauty told her first lie in her desperation — 

“ Yes!” 

“ What’s your name ? ” 

“ Miss Darling!” 

The man looked dubious, and referred to some pa- 
pers in a rack on the wall. It had not occurred to 
Beauty that the officialism of the theatre would check 
and verify any assertion of hers, and her heart sank 
again as he shook his head. 

“What time was your appointment?” he said sus- 
piciously. “ I’ve no instructions with regard to you.” 

“ At eleven o’clock,” said Beauty desperately, re- 
membering the clerk’s aside to his colleague as to the 
Manager’s arrival at the theatre at that hour. It was 
evident that the doorkeeper still hesitated, but he 
looked at Beauty again and seemed uncertain as to 
whether to turn her away. 

“ I’ve no orders to let you in,” he said again, “ but 
Mr. Allonby is in the theatre. There’s a rehearsal on 
this morning — I dunno if he’ll see you till that’s over 
anyhow. But I’ll take you through,” he added, as the 
kettle boiled over and was hastily taken off. He 
raked out the fire, and beckoning Beauty to follow 
him, stepped into the dark passage. “ What did you 
say your name was ? ” he asked. 

“ Miss Beauty Darling! ” 

“ H’m ! ” said the man with a little laugh not unlike 
the box-office-keeper’s. He put his large, unclean hand 
under Beauty’s chin, and raising her face, stared into 
it with eyes which made her flinch. Her first impulse 
was to strike him and run away, for the terror was 


56 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

uppermost again; but there was the stage-door be- 
tween her and safety, and after a second he released 
her, though still with that ambiguous smile. 

“ I dare say he’ll see you ! ” he remarked, as he led 
the way down numerous dark passages and corkscrew 
stairs that made Beauty feel she had entirely lost her 
way, and must be far below the level of the street. 
The bare walls and stone of the stairs had the chill of 
a cellar, and the theatre being but dimly lighted at the 
back was by no means the dazzling palace it looked 
in the front, while every now and then from some far 
and remote section of it came the sound of voices — 
hollow, echoing — as if some one were shouting muf- 
fled orders and many feet were keeping time. But 
the doorkeeper bore to the left, away from the voices, 
and then upstairs again, and through a swing door, 
and then down another long passage until at last he 
knocked gently at another door and waited respect- 
fully for an answer. Beauty waited too, in the dim 
light of the place, and felt the solid ground quiver 
under her feet with the eeriness of her excitement. 

The door was opened by some one who was com- 
ing out — a young man in glasses, with a sheaf of 
papers in his hands. He left the door open behind 
him while he had a low conversation with the door- 
keeper, and through the aperture Beauty could see a 
small room with a writing-table and some chairs — 
apparently the outer office of some inner sanctum. 
Then she heard the young man in glasses say rather 
louder, “ Well, if she has an appointment perhaps he 
will see her for a few minutes before rehearsal. What 
time was the appointment for, dear ? ” he added, turn- 
ing to the small figure he could hardly see in the dusk. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 5 7 

“ Eleven ! ” said Beauty mechanically, repeating her 
second lie in the hope that it would stand her in good 
stead. 

The young man went back into the room, and dis- 
appeared through another door on the farther side. 
After a few seconds he reappeared and beckoned them 
into the light of the apartment, which was apparently 
his own office. 

“ Mr. Allonby doesn’t remember the appointment,” 
he said, looking rather hard at Beauty. “ But he 
has a few minutes to spare. Have you come in 
Minnie Ferras’s place, dear? Who sent you? Ban- 
nermann’s ? ” 

“ Yes ! ” said Beauty again desperately, because it 
was the easiest thing to say. 

“ Well, come along,” he said, leading the way to the 
farther door. “ Hollis ” — to the doorkeeper — “ I 
want you — ” 

He opened the door, and almost pushed Beauty into 
the room, for in a sudden access of nervousness she 
stood as if paralysed. Then she heard the door close 
behind her, and realized that the doorkeeper and the 
young man in glasses were on the other side of it, 
while she was alone with the redoubtable Edgar Al- 
lonby. 

The room in which she found herself was much 
more luxuriously furnished than the outer office, and 
resembled a library or smoking-room in a private 
house far more than a mere place in which to transact 
business. Beauty had never seen such a room, and 
was so impressed as to be still more tongue-tied. 
There was a thick carpet on the floor, and the long 
soft curtains somewhat softened the jolly May sun- 


58 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

light streaming in at the windows, but the place 
seemed very light and airy after the cold and gloom 
of the lower portions of the theatre. Immediately 
opposite Beahty as she entered was a grand piano, an 
imposing object in the midst of the room; and to the 
right of her stood another writing-table and deep 
leather chair, behind which was a stand with a de- 
canter of whisky, a siphon of soda-water, and tum- 
blers. It was more convivial than businesslike, and 
not at all what she had anticipated, — any more than 
was the big man in a well-cut morning suit, with a 
sallow hairless face and eyes deeply set in wrinkles, 
who was standing on the bearskin rug in front of 
the empty fire-place. He had been lighting a cigar, 
and turned round leisurely at Beauty’s entrance; but 
when he saw the slight figure of the child in her short 
skirt and plain straw hat, the same amusement crossed 
his face that had been on the box-office clerks’ and the 
doorkeeper’s. He held out his hand as she advanced 
a step into the room, and his manner was very good- 
tempered. 

“ Well, little girl, what do you want? ” he said. 

“ I want to go on the stage ! ” said Beauty, regain- 
ing her self-possession suddenly, and shaking hands 
with him with a coolness at which his eyes twinkled. 
He put his hand under her chin exactly as the stage- 
doorkeeper had done, and looked at her even longer; 
but she resented the scrutiny less. For one thing, his 
hands were clean, and Beauty was by nature fastidi- 
ous. For another, some subtle sense in her distin- 
guished the Manager’s notice from the doorkeeper’s 
as a compliment from an impertinence. 

“ Oh, you do, do you!” he said, as if still more 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 59 

amused. “ And what can you do ? Have you ever 
acted ? ” 

“ Yes, at school. I can sing, too.” 

This was true. Beauty had a good voice, and was 
always chosen for chorus, if not solos, at any enter- 
tainment given by the school. She sat down in one 
of the big leather chairs without being invited, and 
looked up with more confidence at Mr. Allonby, who 
in his turn sat down at the writing-table and looked 
at her in open entertainment. 

“Well, sing me something, and let me hear!” he 
said. “ Do you want an accompaniment ? ” 

Beauty shook her head, but she went and stood by 
the great piano as if there were something appropriate 
in the juxtaposition. Now the song of the moment, 
the song par excellence in the public mind, was “ Rock 
me in a daisy cradle,” and was sung nightly at Al- 
lonby’s by Miss Edna Carruthers, who was then at the 
top of the tree in Musical Comedy. The song was 
so hackneyed that it had reached throughout the 
length and breadth of London, and Beauty knew it 
by heart, as did most of her classmates, but it was 
still one of the draws of the piece, and Edna Car- 
ruthers was supposed to be inimitable in it. The au- 
dacity of getting up and singing that particular song 
to the Manager of Allonby’s did not occur to Beauty, 
who was splendidly unconscious of any such thing 
in her extreme youth. She stood, to give herself 
more power and breath, and sang the first verse with 
a far-off and unconscious mimicry of the Musical 
Comedy star, for though she had never seen or heard 
her, everybody knew the drawl that came on “ cra- 
adle,” and the points throughout the verse — points 


6o THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


whose double meaning was really lost to Beauty, 
standing there with her baby face and curling hair in 
her short frock. When she stopped, indeed, she was 
a little taken aback by Allonby’s roar of laughter. 

“ All right, little girl ! ” he said at last, patting her 
on the shoulder. “ Don’t be discouraged. You’ve 
got quite a nice little voice. By the way, Mr. Lewis, 
my secretary, thought that you were sent to me by 
Bannermann, the Agent — one of the younger girls 
in the chorus has got the measles, and the Chorus 
Mistress has to fill her place. Did you come from 
Bannermann, or are you a friend of Minnie Ferras? ” 

The deep-set eyes among the wrinkles had grown 
shrewder than ever, but as Beauty looked up at him 
she had an inspiration of candour. After all, she 
had managed to see Mr. Allonby, and the means she 
had used did not matter so much now ! 

“ No, I don’t know Minnie Ferras, and I didn’t 
come from any Agent — I just wanted to get to see 
you and ask you to let me walk on! ” she said, lifting 
her head with the courage of desperation. It chanced 
that the movement brought her within the shaft of a 
stray sunbeam, falling between the long curtains, and 
the light caught the edges of her bright hair and 
changed the brown into gold. The hand on her shoul- 
der became a little heavier, but there was neither an- 
ger nor reproof in the face bent over her. 

“ Bluffed my sentinels and came in on your own, 
eh?” said Allonby, rather as if he enjoyed the con- 
fession. “ Well, suppose I do take you and train 
you, you’ll have to work hard, you know.” 

“ Yes, I know — but I don’t mind that ! ” said 
Beauty breathlessly. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 61 


“ How old are you? ” 

“ Sixteen ! ” said Beauty, lying again. But her eyes 
fell with the effort, for she knew that she hardly 
looked her real age. 

The Manager raised his brows, and the corners of 
his folded mouth twitched a little. He knew that she 
was not telling the truth, but he did not dispute her as- 
sertion at the moment. He made a shrewd guess, 
rather, at the reasons that had brought this pretty 
lower-class child to him, for though he judged that 
she could not be sixteen she was not too young for 
the disaster that had befallen her in Edgar Allonby’s 
unhallowed experience. He knew, when she was 
shown into his room, that he had never seen her be- 
fore, and that she had had no appointment, and he 
had been curious to discover how she had had the 
luck to get into the theatre without one, and actually 
into his presence. The facts that there chanced to be 
a rehearsal that morning for new songs and business, 
that he himself was early at the theatre, and that there 
really was a vacancy amongst the youngest rank of 
the chorus, were all coincidences. Beauty's destiny 
had included a stroke of good or ill luck in her first 
assault on stage-doors that was little short of miracu- 
lous. Anyway, she was there, extraordinarily pretty, 
possessed of a good voice and neat figure, and of a 
type which Edgar Allonby recognized at once as suited 
to the requirements of his girls. He knew a good 
thing when he saw it, and it was not his business to 
ask too many questions. His inquiries were in conse- 
quence brief and to the point. 

“ Look here, dear, I'm not going to catechize you. 
I dare say you’ve been a naughty girl and got into 


62 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


trouble with your people, eh? Well, don’t do it any 
more! ” (This easy lesson in morality was nowhere 
less likely to be learnt than behind the scenes at Al- 
lonby’s. But it sounded infinitely charitable and kind 
to Beauty after Mrs. Darling’s reception of the same 
slip.) “Do you live in London?” 

“ N-no — ” Beauty hesitated. “ I’ve been living 
with a woman on the South side — my mother’s 
dead.” She spoke more glibly, knowing that this was 
actually the truth as far as she knew it, Mrs. Darling’s 
references to the gutter from which she came having 
revived it in her mind. She did not mention a father, 
which fact was silently noted by Allonby and inter- 
preted truly. “ I’ve left everybody I know now, and 
I want to work for myself,” said Beauty grandly. 

Allonby laughed again, and struck the little electric 
bell on his writing-table. “ All right — I’ll give you 
a trial,” he said. “ There’s a rehearsal for new songs 
and business this morning, and you can go to the 
Chorus Mistress and learn what to do. I’ll give you 
a pound a week, and you can go home with Mrs. Sum- 
mers — one of our dressers — and she’ll find you 
somewhere to live. Have you any money ? ” 

“ Yes, I’ve got a sovereign.” 

“ Hold tight on it, then ” — he laughed again — 
“ and pay at the end of the week, when you will have 
earned some more.” The bell had been answered by 
the young man in glasses, who looked at Beauty, sit- 
ting so coolly in the deep leather chair, with some curi- 
osity. “ My new leading lady, Ralph ! ” said Allonby 
dryly, pointing to her. “ Miss — By the way, 
what’s your name, little girl ? ” 

“Beauty Darling!” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 63 

This time the secretary joined in the laugh, and 
when a minute later an older man came into the room 
she was reintroduced with mock ceremony as Miss 
Beauty Darling, the future leading lady of Allonby’s ! 
The men’s amusement had the effect of abashing 
Beauty as no rebuff could have done, and she col- 
oured uncomfortably, her little red mouth pouting in 
a fashion that was one day to become famous, and 
which evidently attracted the last-comer. 

“ I’m your Assistant Stage-Manager then, Miss 
Beauty ! ” he said, patting her cheek. “ All right, 
Mr. Allonby, I’ll look after her — come along with 
me and be introduced to the crowd.” He took the 
child’s hand in his own and held it while he arranged 
certain business details with Allonby, and then led 
her away with him through another door to the one 
by which she had entered, and which opened almost 
opposite to a small electric lift. The Assistant Stage- 
Manager — he had been called Mr. Wentworth to 
Beauty — put his charge into the lift, which he worked 
for himself, and took her up another floor or so, giving 
her the bewildered feeling that a theatre was really a 
town in itself behind the scenes, and that she had not 
the remotest idea in which direction lay that far-off 
stage-door by which she had pushed her way to pos- 
sible fortune. 

The lift brought them to another corridor and a 
door with “ Rehearsal Room” painted in uncontro- 
vertible letters, into which they entered. It was a 
large bare apartment, without carpet or draperies, and 
no furniture beyond another piano and some chairs 
on which a dozen girls of Beauty’s age or younger 
were resting and talking, while a lady was standing 


64 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

at the piano arranging some loose slips of music. This 
lady turned on their entrance and showed Beauty a 
capable face and a great amount of black hair dressed 
in so many puffs and curls and partings that her head 
seemed an advertisement of half-a-dozen different 
styles of coiffure. 

“Well, Mr. Wentworth, what is it?” she said 
sharply. 

“ Oh, Miss Praed, I’ve brought you a recruit,” said 
the Assistant Stage-Manager. “ Mr. Allonby wants 
this girl put in Minnie Ferras’s place. Been at it 
long?” 

“ No, we’ve only just begun.” 

“ Well, Mr. Hughes wants you down on the stage 
at twelve o’clock — think they can sing the chorus of 
Miss Carruthers’s song by then ? ” 

“They must, if Mr. Hughes wants them!” said 
Miss Praed grimly. “ Kittie Smart, show this girl 
Minnie Ferras’s position, please — she stands next to 
you, doesn’t she ? ” 

“ Yes, Miss Praed.” A thin dark child, who 
looked older than Beauty, came forward and beck- 
oned her away from Wentworth. She was by no 
means pretty, according to Beauty’s canons of taste, 
but she had beautiful dark eyes, and when “ made up ” 
and enhanced by a flaxen wig she was more effective 
across the footlights than many a more regular- 
featured girl. Big eyes, sharp features, and a good 
outline of body were, as Beauty gradually discovered, 
the real points for a stage success. The rest could be 
easily altered or added. Kitty had a precocity that 
excelled anything Beauty had ever encountered, even 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 65 

at school, and began to chatter at once without any 
shyness. 

“ So Minnie’s got the push ! Rotten luck for her. 
Are you a friend of hers?” 

“ No, I don’t know her.” 

“Well, she came on next to me — I’m corner girl. 
I’ll show you. Ever been on before ? ” 

“ No!” 

“ You’ll have to look sharp and catch us up — 
we’ve had one rehearsal. I wonder why Papa took 
you ! — we always call Mr. Allonby ‘ Papa,’ even the 
old hands.” 

“ Because I asked him, I suppose ! ” said Beauty im- 
pertinently, the instinct to assert herself rising against 
the other child’s coolness. Kittie opened her big eyes 
and laughed. 

“ Oh, I dare say ! — tell that to the supers. What’s 
your name? ” 

“ Beauty Darling.” 

“ My ! That’s modest ! ” But her look at Beauty’s 
face was shrewdly envious. “ I’ve been in the panto 
three years — know the ropes now. I suppose you’ve 
never been behind before? ” 

“ No,” said Beauty reluctantly. “ But I’ve got a 
friend who’s been on the stage two years.” This 
boast was not quite true, for Lucy Dale had never 
been a friend of hers. Beauty was too young to as- 
sociate with her when at school, and Lucy had be- 
longed to the ambitious, hard-working type of girl 
who does not gravitate towards Beauty Darlings. 
But failing her own experience Beauty wanted to as- 
sert some one else’s. 


5 


66 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ Oh,” said Kittie interestedly. “ Where is she ? 
At the Satyr? That’s an awful house — the Satyr 
girls are all fasties from the time they go on at our 
age, and old Nolly O’Donovan’s a beast — you should 
just hear! Where’s your friend?” 

“ She’s on tour, with a Shakespeare Company,” 
said Beauty, rather crestfallen, for it sounded less ex- 
citing than the Satyr. 

“ My word ! She is up in the flies ! You won’t 
find much Shakespeare here. — I wish they’d get on. 
Wentworth always stays jawing to Miss Praed — 
she’s his girl ! ” 

Beauty glanced at the Chorus Mistress in blank 
surprise. She had not struck her as attractive, but it 
was true that she was carrying on a low-toned con- 
versation with the Assistant Stage-Manager, and the 
whispered comments of the little chorus girls were 
more personal than respectful. Kittie had time to 
explain that they were all a new feature of Allonby’s, 
and had been engaged to sing as a fairy chorus of 
Miss Carruthers’s new song, the piece having run for 
six months and wanting new “ fat.” The children 
were dressed as fairies, and came on riding on the 
shoulders of men dressed as ogres. The tallest of 
the supers were chosen for these parts, and the light- 
est girls, who, whether they liked it or no, were tossed 
up like babies in the arms of their attendants and 
handled as freely as dolls. Kittie herself belonged 
to a troupe of dancers, six in number, who were al- 
ways engaged together, and went by the names of Our 
Dollie, Our Poppie, Our Lottie, Our Fannie, and Our 
Nellie. The rest of the chorus, including the un- 
fortunate Minnie whose place Beauty had taken, were 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 67 

drawn from less distinguished ranks of performers; 
but they had mostly had some experience. 

“ You’ll pick it up all right,” said Kittie with good- 
natured encouragement. “ And if Papa has taken a 
fancy to you, Hughes will have to be decent. 
(Hughes is our Stage-Manager — and he can, just! 
Every one’s a bit afraid of him.) I hate this fairy 
chorus, but you mustn’t be squeamish — ” 

“ Now, girls!” 

Miss Praed’s baton rapped the music-stand, and 
the work began in earnest as Mr. Wentworth left the 
room. It was not very hard work to Beauty, for 
she had a good ear, and the immediate necessity for 
the chorus was that they should get a catchy waltz 
tune by heart and know the cues. But the monotony 
of entrance and exit, the repetition of movement, and 
the going over and over the same phrase, made her 
head ache before the first part of her task was ended. 
Miss Praed trooped her children off at twelve o’clock 
with a punctuality she had not shown at the begin- 
ning of the rehearsal, and by the same wonderful and 
winding ways brought them to a lower level, until 
the sound of voices and movements that Beauty had 
heard on first entering the theatre grew clearer again. 
But she did not expect to emerge on to the naked 
stage quite so suddenly as she did, and at a moment’s 
notice it seemed to her that she gave a gasp and had 
passed through gaunt skeletons of flapping canvas and 
scaffolding — could those be the wings that looked so 
real from the front? — into a glare of light and the 
hub of the universe. 

There it was, the real stage, the place that was 
nearly a palace or a forest or a ship in mid-ocean, 


68 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


from the other side of the footlights, and on which 
it seemed almost impossible not to act amongst such 
realistic surroundings — there it was, and it had 
changed to a slope of bare boards, so awkward to 
walk on that it upset all one’s calculations at once; 
while the backcloths and the wings and the drops were 
mere blurs of paint and outlines, horribly unlike any- 
thing that ever was on land or sea. As to the glamour 
of the footlights, they were nothing but a glare that 
made one blink, bewildered, and the gulf of the house 
beyond was insignificant and not at all inspiring. The 
reaction in Beauty’s mind was followed by the natural 
thought that this was only because it was a rehearsal, 
and that at a real performance things could not be so 
tawdry and prosaic and suggestive of the machinery 
that slung them all together; but she shrank back in- 
stinctively, and Kittie had to push her up the slope of 
the boards and into the corner where the “ children’s 
chorus ” were crowded together until wanted. 

The scene was set for the second act of “ The 
Queen of Hearts,” and as it happened to represent 
the Residency in some remote Sandwich island, of 
course there was a heavy marble seat under a clump 
of (stage) bamboo. On this seat were sitting some 
real ladies of the chorus, also waiting their turn, and 
holding a twittering conversation amongst them- 
selves. In the front of the stage the comedian and the 
leading man were arranging the details of some new 
business with a lady in the flimsiest of silk blouses and 
a pancake hat tied with strings under one ear, while 
in front of them, with his back to the house, stood a 
young man who did not look more than thirty, with a 
thin, clean-shaven face, and a cigarette in his mouth. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 69 

“ Is that — ” began Beauty, nudging Kittie Smart 
to distract her attention from Our Dollie, who was 
talking to her. 

“ Sh-sh-sh ! Yes; that’s Mr. Hughes!” said Kit- 
tie, looking round quickly. He looked so insignifi- 
cant to Beauty after Mr. Allonby’s huge, burly figure 
that she regarded him with indifference. 

“ I don’t see what they’re all afraid of,” she said, 
turning her eyes more interestedly on Miss Carruth- 
ers. 

“You wait till he’s bucketing his Company!” 

Beauty had not long to wait. Mr. Hughes sud- 
denly raised his voice, and the authority in it was un- 
mistakable. “ Now, then ; every one for the finale of 
the act, please — if those girls have not finished dress- 
ing they must come as they are,” he said. 

“ It’s new dresses as well as business, and they’re 
not ready,” Kitty whispered, as the chorus girls al- 
ready present rose from the marble seat and took up 
their positions. Then they began to come on from all 
sides, “ just as they were,” as the Stage-Manager had 
decreed, for the new costumes were not finished and 
the department that looked after such things was 
seething. Some of the girls were in full dress, some 
in their own most unofficial mufti, one or two in a 
morning blouse and a skirt that belonged to their 
evening gowns in the play. The effect was parti-col- 
oured and indescribable. One girl had the label still 
pinned to her gown that meant the alterations which 
there had been no time to make, and they hurried to 
their places as if driven by some former experience. 
There was no orchestra to-day ; but the Chorus 
Mistress went to the piano standing in the wings 


70 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

(Allonby’s seemed rich in pianos) to act as accom- 
panist, and very wonderful she was, running off hand- 
fuls of notes at the suggestion of the Stage-Manager, 
and cutting in with accentuated time when the voices 
threatened to fall like “ dropping shots.” The Con- 
ductor only attended full rehearsals, not new business, 
professionally; but he was present, and added to the 
formidable array of authority by occasionally waving 
an arm and stamping a foot to impress the time on the 
rank and file. Add to this the Assistant Stage-Man- 
ager, with one eye on his chief, running to and fro to 
push people into their places if they were utterly lost, 
and the property man, who was obliged to dash in and 
out in record time with his properties between the new 
business to be rehearsed, and the staff of Allonby’s is 
complete. 

It was fortunate for the children that they had never 
yet been included in the final tableau, and that Hughes 
did not expect them to know their work or positions 
until he had patiently instructed them. They were 
driven off into the wings for the moment, and the 
grand dance of the finale was taken through, even the 
principals being expected to take up their rightful 
positions. For a minute it seemed that all was going 
well, and then like the first clap of thunder the Stage- 
Manager struck his hands together, the piano stopped, 
and the whole cast, at first unable to collect them- 
selves, fell into silence a bar or two behind. 

“ You’re all like a damned flock of lost sheep!” 
came the hard ringing voice from the stalls where 
Hughes had moved down to be out of the way of the 
dance. “ It isn’t like this at night — why the devil 
aren’t you in your right places ? ” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 71 

The tone of an angry man using expletives is very 
much more forcible than the same words written. 
Kittie squeezed Beauty’s arm, and looked at her with 
triumph in her eyes. “ He’s beginning — what did I 
tell you ? ” she said. “ Oh, it’s going to be hot for 
them in a minute ! ” Beauty did not think it sounded 
at all pleasant ; she craned her head forward to watch 
what was going on, and saw the irrepressible chorus 
beginning to whisper again amongst themselves while 
Hughes called out two men in particular for correc- 
tion. The surprising point of his remarks to her un- 
learned ears was his familiar way of addressing them 
while he bullied them. But that is theatrical eti- 
quette. 

“No, dear boy, come down stage — now you, old 
boy, move to the right.” The two men obeyed as 
puppets might a showman. They were all “ old 
boys,” and the girls were “my child,” though he 
might curse them in the same breath. 

“ I’m glad we’re not on ! ” whispered Beauty. 

“ Our turn next,” said Kittie, with a wicked laugh. 
“ Look out ! the girls are not attending — oh, my 
aunt ! he will let fly ! ” 

“ Take that chorus again,” said the Stage-Manager, 
“just to impress it on you — now, end of duet — 
come along, come along! I’ve never known you so 
slow. I suppose you are waiting for the resurrec- 
tion!” 

The principals gave the last bars of the duet, and 
the chorus took up their part, merging again into the 
dance. But even Beauty could see this time that they 
were not well together, and the next instant the music 
had stopped again, and the storm broke. 


72 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“ You fools ! Have you all gone mad ? ” thundered 
the Stage-Manager. “ I’ve just told you — we shall 
have disaster on the night. Get back to your places.” 
Three more bars, and then the man who had been 
called out before made a fatal blunder, and was hope- 
lessly in the way of the front ranks when he should 
have been at the back. Hughes was on him in an in- 
stant. 

“ You ass! Why don’t you do as I tell you? 
You’re here to do as you are told! What are you 
doing, you fool ? ” He seemed fit to foam at the 
mouth, and the browbeaten actor turned to bay like a 
bewildered stag. 

“ I was only doing my best ! ” he said sullenly. 

“ You weren’t — you were making a damned idiot 
of yourself!” shouted the Stage-Manager, his hands 
gripping the stall in front of him, and his terrible, 
bright eyes on every corner of the stage at once as 
well as the unfortunate man who was up for censure. 
Those who had been chattering amongst themselves 
recognized, too late, that they were under observation, 
and waited helplessly for the storm to break on them 
also, for the Stage-Manager at Allonby’s was not 
dreaded without reason. The slight, boyish figure 
shook with rage — the words rushed out like blows 
and hit the quivering chorus. Syddie Hughes was 
bucketing his Company! 

Peeping over Kittie’s shoulder Beauty caught sight 
of a big quiet figure standing in the stalls also, a little 
behind Hughes, and recognized Edgar Allonby. She 
wondered whether his presence would be any check 
on the manner and language of his subordinate, but 
he only smiled as if well satisfied, and sat down in the 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 73 

stalls for a few minutes. He did not interfere with 
his sweating, swearing Stage-Manager, but his pres- 
ence was another inspiration of awe, and a little ripple 
like visible nerves passed over the chorus. They be- 
gan to do better, too — the voices came together like 
scattered strands of sound gathered into a musical 
pattern, the feet went like clockwork, one felt the 
whole scene moving with a spring and finish to the 
final tableau. Edgar Allonby turned in his stall and 
nodded to himself, and Miss Praed at the piano felt 
the last clash of a chord in full sympathy with the 
swing of the crowd behind her. 

“ Thank you ! ” said the Stage-Manager slowly, his 
words dropping three semitones and falling to deep- 
breathed satisfaction. “ That’s better. That's more 
like my Company ! ” 

A minute later he added : “ Now the children’s 

troop for the final tableau, please,” in his ordinary 
tones, and Kittie sprang to attention and led, with 
Beauty following upon her heels. But the work just 
witnessed had made her very anxious to do her best, 
and both in this grouping and the chorus to Miss 
Edna Carruthers’s song the new girl at Allonby’s con- 
centrated her frightened faculties on the instructions 
given her, to the saving of all save a few sharp re- 
bukes. That first rehearsal had taught Beauty Darling 
one thing — the right of man to swear at a woman 
on the stage. Her ears were not yet hardened, and 
she shrank as from a blow. In time she would come 
to look on bad language as a natural expression, for 
herself as well as others; for great is the power of 
familiarity. 


CHAPTER IV 


T HERE began a period of hard work for Beauty 
of which she had not dreamed, and for which 
she would certainly have had little inclination if it 
had been revealed to her beforehand. But the neces- 
sity of bread and butter is a provision of Nature to 
turn even the shirker into some sort of self-support- 
ing citizen, and the child found, as she had all her 
little life, that it was a question of “needs must/’ 
Somebody was always driving her, in Beauty’s ex- 
perience — first it was Mrs. Darling to unwelcome 
duties, then her teachers to unwelcome tasks, now it 
was her empty stomach to the labour of earning her 
own bread. She had thought of the stage as a life 
where one did very much as one liked — in spite of 
Lucy Dale’s experience — varied with the amusement 
of “ dressing up.” Of the long tedious hours spent 
at rehearsal, sometimes in doing nothing while other 
portions of the piece were being rehearsed in which 
she had no part — of the chorus calls, and the dancing 
calls, and the full-cast calls — of belated meals and 
footsore bodies, jaded and exhausted with standing 
— she had certainly known nothing until she “ went 
on ” at Allonby’s. 

There were rehearsals nearly every day during that 
record run of “ The Queen of Hearts,” for no one 
knew better than Mr. Sydney Hughes how to prevent 
a company from getting stale after the three-hundred- 
74 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 75 

and-sixtieth performance, and to keep them up to the 
mark with improvements and alterations. The rest- 
less figure and keen face became as much an object of 
respect, not to say fear, to Beauty Darling as to any- 
one else at Allonby’s. To have Syddie Hughes sin- 
gle her out for reprimand was a thing at which even 
a chorus girl quailed. His tongue was like the lash 
of a whip, and some sixth sense seemed to tell him 
which unit in the whole huge mass was not using voice 
or feet to the utmost capacity. 

“If you don’t sing you can go. Or you know the 
penalty ” — was a frequent threat held over the head 
of the chorus, the penalty in this case being a prohi- 
bition from appearing in the evening performance, 
which meant that the salary for the night was de- 
ducted. When your salary is only a pound a week, 
as Beauty’s was at first, a fine is a serious matter, and 
a plea of a bad cold or even obvious hoarseness, was 
not accepted — they were there to work, and work 
they must. There were fines also for coming late, 
either to rehearsal or the performance — “ the show ” 
as it is called. When the girls arrived they were 
checked by the stage-doorkeeper, Hollis, and their 
names entered in his book, which was then sent up to 
the Stage Manager at the hour when rehearsal had 
been called, and those that were missing were noted, 
even though they might by that time have arrived. 
Then the names were read over again from what is 
called “ the roll-call ” book, and if a girl failed to 
answer she was again fined as missing. Beauty 
Darling learned to overcome her natural tendency to 
dawdle and to be punctual and conscientious, through 
sheer necessity, for it was not only the dreaded 


76 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

Hughes whose eye seemed to be always upon her, but 
Wentworth, the Assistant, the scene-shifters, and the 
limelight-men — even the call-boys frequently acted 
as spies to see whether the girls were “ slacking.” 

“ You have to biff out for all you’re worth at this 
job,” said little Kittie Smart in the confidence of the 
dressing-room. “ Most of the Satyr girls are ‘ keeps,’ 
and can do as they like, because their men pay for ’em. 
Their management won’t give them the push for slack- 
ing! But we’re different at Allonby’s — talk about 
an easy life ! My aunt ! ” 

Certainly it was a life that did not begin very early, 
unless there were a call at eleven, which necessitated 
getting up at ten however scamped one’s toilette, to 
allow time for a tram-ride, for nearly all the girls 
lived some way out in the suburbs. Beauty quickly 
fell out of the routine of her schooldays, and the eight 
o’clock breakfast and nine or half-past school, and 
learned to combine her breakfast and lunch, or to run 
tea into supper ; but once the day was begun the hours 
went on and on, and stretched into the night, ending 
very late. Her curly head often felt dull and sleepy, 
and her blue eyes closed before she had well reached 
the pillow. I fear that had Mrs. Summers (in whose 
charge Edgar Allonby had placed her) looked into the 
narrow room where her charge kept her few pos- 
sessions, she would often have seen a heap of clothes 
fallen on the floor as the child had stripped them off, 
and Beauty herself, unwashed and uncombed, huddled 
under the bedclothes and dead asleep, with her red lips 
apart — beautiful even then, in her squalor and neg- 
lect of her body, the one perfect thing that God had 
given her as yet. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 77 

A child of fourteen — even a child of Beauty’s 
class, which is far older than those in a higher station 
— is not the best keeper of herself, physically or men- 
tally. Beauty lived haphazard, taking her meals with 
the dresser when at home, but too often spending 
what money she had on cakes when she had to run 
out for food from rehearsal. The child in her was 
easily tempted by sweets in place of the solid whole- 
some meals she had always had at midday in school, 
and her body suffered. She grew paler, with that 
anaemic look of the London girl, and her limbs were 
less round and firm. Futhermore, she fell easily into 
the snare of cheap lace and tawdry beads in which 
the older girls indulged, though those of her own age 
were still somewhat restricted to more serviceable 
clothes by their mothers. There were a good many 
mothers always coming and going to and from the 
theatre, looking after Poppie and Nellie and Gladys, 
and the Management cursed them even while allowing 
their necessity. A theatrical mother is a thing apart. 
She is like nothing else on earth, and her life seems 
to be divided between constructing food and clothes 
for her daughter out of piteous scraps and rating her 
like a troop-sergeant. Many of these women kept 
cheap lodging-houses, sometimes respectable, some- 
times not. The associations of such homes made the 
children impudent and shrewdly independent — the 
inevitable consequences of the lives they led — while 
the mothers toiled and nagged. Beauty was glad on 
the whole that she owned no authority save Mrs. Sum- 
mers’s, the Dresser’s, for that she could easily ignore ; 
but she was quick to realize that her social position 
would have been improved by the possession of a 


78 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

family. A girl who came from nowhere, and whom 
Edgar Allonby had taken out of the. streets, it might 
be, had only the hall-mark of his approval for her 
warranty — and that was dubious, even at Allonby’s. 
Of “ Papa” himself she saw very little, as a matter 
of fact. After his first acceptance of her he took 
no notice of her existence, for between his immense 
importance and the mere cipher which Beauty repre- 
sented there was a great gulf fixed. Once or twice 
in a chance meeting behind the scenes he spoke kindly 
to her, hoped she was working steadily and getting on 
all right — even made a little joke, “ You’re going to 
be leading lady some day — you must train for that, 
you know ! ” — for he was good-natured and good- 
humoured as a rule, save when the piece was not run- 
ning well, or he had had ill-luck at billiards. Beauty 
did not expect more notice from him. She fell easily 
into her place, and was thankful to be on the salary 
list at his theatre rather than at the Satyr, where the 
girls were all “ fasties ” from fourteen upwards, or 
the Sovereignty, where they were underpaid and ill- 
housed. She had had enough of mankind to last her 
for several years of her life, and the mere licence of 
touch and freedom of look behind the scenes made 
her shrink, though she dared not pose as a prude. In 
one instance, however, her fastidiousness drove her 
into a direct appeal to “Papa” himself for redress, 
and her outrageous boldness was its own reward. 

The first scene in which she and the other children 
made their appearance was that fantastic spectacle 
with Edna Carruthers as Fairy Queen, and the youth- 
ful chorus as her attendants in the arms of their ogres. 
Beauty was a light weight, but not so light as some 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 79 

of the Lilliput Troupe. Her ogre was therefore 
chosen from the taller supers, and he chanced to be a 
person whose habits were uncleanly and his atmos- 
phere not all that might have been desired. Beauty’s 
instincts were fastidious, however careless she might 
be at times from tire and lack of supervision, and the 
clasp of the man’s arms filled her with physical nausea 
and a loathing quite incomprehensible to most of 
the other children. They did not like “ Drains,” 
as the super was coarsely nicknamed amongst them, 
and they pitied Beauty, but that the actual con- 
tact was intolerable to her they could not under- 
stand. The man himself never guessed the extent 
of her repulsion or he might have been con- 
siderably mortified. He was on the whole good- 
looking rather than the reverse, and his experience 
of the world of Drury Lane, from which he came, 
led him to believe himself acceptable to its women- 
kind — who did not wash either. He had no vicious 
tendencies, and would have treated most of the chil- 
dren with kindly indifference; but Beauty’s prettiness 
betrayed him into coarse teasing and attempted pet- 
ting while she was in his arms, which met with abso- 
lutely no response and merely led him to regard her 
as rather stupid. 

“ I should slap his face, or pinch his dirty fat 
arms ! ” said Kitty viciously when Beauty complained 
in confidence. “ The sauce ! Fancy a man like 
Drains making up to one of US! ” For the division 
of class is nowhere more strict than in the theatre, and 
the super, engaged for some exigency of the play, 
may hardly raise his eyes to those on the salary list. 
The children were “ specials,” too, but specials with 


8o THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


a difference. They had a scene to themselves, and 
sang in chorus, besides being on in one or two other 
curtains. The odorous ogre had committed an indis- 
cretion in taking liberties with Beauty. 

As a matter of fact she had been silent through 
physical disgust — a kind of paralysis of the temper. 
Twice she tried to get her ogre changed, with a cal- 
lousness to some other child’s endurance of him that 
was half self-preservation, and failing to accomplish 
it she looked about for rescue in a higher tribunal. It 
chanced that one evening between the acts she met 
Edgar Allonby on the stairs, coming from the comedi- 
an’s dressing-room, where he had shed the light of his 
countenance for a few minutes. Beauty had come 
down to try and find Mr. Wentworth, from whom 
those in her dressing-room hoped some small indul- 
gence, and had no business on the stairs at all. She 
certainly did not expect to see Allonby. He was on 
his way either to the front of the house or his own 
room, and she stood aside for him to pass her with 
the instinct of the serf to the overlord that never quite 
dies out, even in a chorus girl. Then she remembered 
her plight and stopped him. 

“ Mr. Allonby, might I ask you a favour ? It’s only 
a little one.” The red lips parted slowly in a faint 
smile, for she was a little uncertain of her ground, 
and the blue eyes looked up confidingly as at her 
patron. 

Allonby frowned slightly. He had learned to nip 
requests for favours in the bud, but he asked : “ Well, 
what is it? ” shortly enough, and stood still to hear. 

“ Could I have another super to go on with in our 
scene? It’s the chorus of Miss Carruthers’s fairy 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 81 

song, where we come on with the ogres.” Beauty 
spoke breathlessly, afraid that he would not have the 
patience to hear. 

“ Why? What’s the matter with the super? ” said 
the great Manager suspiciously. He expected a com- 
plaint of the man’s advances to the girl, and was 
ready to tell her that it must be her own fault, for he 
objected to having it brought home to him that such 
things had threatened the children in his theatre, even 
though he knew it to be true in a few cases. Allonby 
was rather fond of asserting that his girls were well 
looked after, and no nonsense allowed with the 
younger ones, in contrast to such notorious houses as 
the Satyr or the Sovereignty. His glance at Beauty’s 
raised face was not encouraging. “ What complaint 
have you to make of the super ? Who is he ? ” he said 
uncompromisingly. 

“ It’s Seaton, Mr. Allonby, and — and — he’s not 
clean! I can’t bear him to touch me. He smells — 
ugh ! ” Beauty wrinkled up her straight little nose, 
and her lip lifted expressively. It was so little what 
Allonby expected that he burst out laughing. 

“You little cat!” he said. “So he’s offensive to 
your ladyship, is he? Well, I agree that it’s not nice 
for you. I’ll see what can be done.” 

He nodded at her, still laughing, and went on to 
tell the tale to his Stage-Manager and Secretary, who 
laughed in their turn. Allonby approved of the de- 
cencies of life amongst his girls, however, and con- 
sidering that Beauty Darling had no mother to look 
after her he thought her objection rather creditable. 
He asked Sydney Hughes to look into the matter, 

with the result that the super Seaton got his notice, 

6 


82 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


for there were other things against him, and another 
man was engaged in his place, less physically offen- 
sive, but by no means cleaner-minded, as Beauty dis- 
covered on the first night of her introduction to him 
in the fairy scene. Her relief at the dismissal of 
Seaton, however, was so much beyond her power to 
express that she put up with the new man’s moral 
discrepancies, and forebore to tell Kittie. It was 
infra dig. to be kissed by one of the supers behind 
the scenes, and so she avoided his blandishment off the 
stage, and ran away from him when he lay in wait 
for her at the stage-door. But she was beginning 
to find that her face was bringing her attention, even 
amongst the highest members of the Company, and 
began to take it as a matter of course — an egoism 
that saved her from serious downfall. Men in the 
theatre and men in the street were much of a much- 
ness in her experience. Now and then they spoke to 
her without any further introduction than that they 
wished to look at her more closely; once or twice 
they tried to see her home; but she had learned a 
hard lesson at Trevor Guy’s hands, and steered her 
way more safely, poor little damaged craft! than many 
a more perfect vessel in unknown seas of trouble. 

Mrs. Summers lived at Peckham. Night after 
night Beauty was rolled out from Waterloo Bridge 
down South, leaving the more orderly streets away 
north-east, until the car joined the ringing, rolling 
volley of sound at the great Elephant and Castle cen- 
tre, where at least five different lines cross and re- 
cross, and as many as seven cars are within the glance 
of an eye at once. The girls playing at some house 
in the Strand allowed an extra ten minutes for the 


THE CAREER OE BEAUTY DARLING 83 

wonderful “ centre ” if they happened to change trams 
for some South suburb, and to those unaccustomed 
to the spider’s web of lines the confusion was bewil- 
dering. One was hit with sound, and threatened with 
the rolling stock of the Companies before and behind, 
while the thunder of the trams ran on and into each 
other like the continuous fire of musketry ; but Beauty 
slept through it many a night, her fair hair pillowed on 
the hard frame of the window, and her blue eyes only 
reluctantly opening when Mrs. Summers shook her 
by the arm with a “ ’Ere we are ! Never saw such a 
girl — sleep! sleep! sleep! You’d sleep in the car all 
night if they’d let you, and not wake till the end of the 
first journey to-morrer!” 

Mrs. Summers was inclined to be blear-eyed and 
facetious at one o’clock in the morning, when they got 
home. Her habits were not nice, but she had at least 
found a refuge for Beauty in the untidy attic over her 
own room. It was cold and shabby and not very 
clean, veritably under the roof of a dilapidated house 
in a dingy road off Rye Lane, and in consequence bit- 
terly cold in winter. Beauty paid four shillings a 
week for the privilege of sleeping and dressing in this 
apartment, which was scandalous considering the ac- 
commodation received ; but Peckham is handy for the 
trams, and the trams are handy for girls whose work 
lies in the centre of London. Therefore landladies 
know that they can charge rather more in proportion 
than the tenant of a house in Park Lane would expect 
to pay, and their wisdom is proved by the fact that 
they get what they ask. Beauty was glad at least that 
she had the privacy of her attic, and though she had 
some of her meals with Mrs. Summers, was inclined to 


84 THE career of beauty darling 

hold herself aloof from the Dresser in a small way. 
For Mrs. Darling had been a very sober woman, of 
that class of self-respecting poor who look upon such 
a calling as Mrs. Summers’s as more beneath them than 
a duchess looks upon the wife of her tradesman. 
Beauty sniffed disdainfully and said “ Gin ! ” on more 
than one occasion when her new chaperon stumbled 
into her own room and sat down on the bed with a va- 
cant stare round her ; but she was to find later on that 
the neighbourhood of that most volatile of spirits was 
not confined to the staff of a theatre — it was too 
familiar a drink in the dressing-rooms to retain its 
alien flavour for long. Such meals as the child did 
share with Mrs. Summers were provided by the land- 
lady, and were just as cheap as the room was dear. 
They cost Beauty about three shillings a week, and 
were not exorbitant, for the poor can cater for them- 
selves in such neighbourhoods more easily than the 
rich. Sunday is a great day in Peckham for buying 
a meat dinner, or vegetables to cook with it, and you 
make your choice from trays of pieces marked six- 
pence, fourpence, or even less ; while the greengrocers’ 
shops display generous counters of fruit and vegeta- 
bles, piled up in divisions, and carefully guarded from 
marauding fingers by wire nettings, for the wares are 
mostly in the open air outside the shop. Sometimes 
Beauty herself would take her turn with the red-fisted 
working women and meagre children who crowded 
like animals at feeding time outside these barriers, 
and come home with her landlady’s string-bag con- 
taining an assortment as varied as a co-operative 
store’s. Her early training had made her a better 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 85 

market-woman than a gentler nurtured girl, and, pro- 
vided no one at the theatre knew it, she had no ob- 
jection to reverting to old habits. She could, indeed, 
go shopping for other people better than for herself, for 
habit taught her that when she was given so much to 
spend she must make it do ; but her own salary seemed 
to muddle itself away, so that she was often in ad- 
vance of treasury, and had mortgaged her pound a 
week beforehand. Four shillings for rent, and three 
for food, as well as her tram fares, which never seemed 
to come to less than another three shillings, however 
much she tried to keep to the twopenny fares, did not 
leave much margin for the meals that had to be bought 
haphazard at the theatre and the innumerable small 
expenses that became necessities. Her washing she 
did for herself, as is usual with girls of her position, 
save that she really did it and many of them left it 
undone; but even in Peckham the finery after which 
she hankered was hopelessly out of reach. 

Mrs. Summers was at least a keen-eyed guardian, 
even in her cups, and rarely allowed her charge to 
drift into chance acquaintances in the trams without 
such outspoken grumbling as made it not worth while 
to provoke her. She could not control the girl in 
reality, but she could protest, and her protests made 
Beauty feel ridiculous. It was many years before it 
occurred to Beauty that the Dresser had acted towards 
her like a rheumy old watch-dog, or to find an ob- 
scure reason in the importance of the man who had 
placed her in charge ; but she knew dimly that her im- 
maturity had been guarded for the possibilities of the 
future. Owing to Mrs. Summers, both in and out 


86 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


of the theatre, she went unmolested when she might 
certainly have drifted into various intimacies, and 
therefore it was by a strange chance that she really 
did make a friend one night when she was going home. 
The car was full, and Mrs. Summers was obliged to 
take a seat near the door, while Beauty was squeezed 
in farther up the body of the vehicle. She so much 
resented being unable to lean her head against the 
framework behind her as usual and go to sleep, that 
she hardly noticed who her neighbours were until one 
or two of the passengers got out and left her more 
room. Then, with a sigh of relief, Beauty sat back 
in her seat and calmly prepared to drop off. The 
rattle of the car acted like a rough lullaby, but through 
it she was vaguely conscious of a nice voice speaking 
to her. 

“ If you lean against my shoulder, little girl, you 
could rest better. What makes you so tired ? ” 

Beauty opened her heavy eyes a little and saw that 
the man next to her was of a better class than the peo- 
ple who usually filled the car, though his blue serge coat 
was shabby and stained and his shirt cuffs were frayed 
at the edges. He had a thin worn face, but his eyes 
were very much alive as they looked down at her. 

“ The show wasn’t over till half-past eleven,” mur- 
mured Beauty sleepily. “It makes it so beastly late 
getting home. We’re on in the last scene — they 
might just as well let us off coming on in the final 
crowd — it means half an hour later — ” 

Her voice trailed off into silence, and she yawned. 
The young man turned towards her and deftly slipped 
his arm under her shoulders so that her head rested 
against him. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 87 

“ The show ! ” he repeated wonderingly. “ Surely 
you don’t mean that you are on the stage ! ” 

“ Why not ? ” said Beauty crossly, for she was really 
tired. She closed her eyes, however, and rested very 
much more comfortably against the shabby coat and 
its wearer. 

“ You’re such a baby — it seems impossible ! You 
ought to be at school.” 

“ I’m sixteen,” said Beauty mendaciously, and still 
with her eyes shut. “ On at Allonby’s — been there a 
year.” Another lie, for it was only six months since 
her interview with Edgar Allonby in his office; but 
she did not want inquiries as to whence she had come, 
and why, even from a stranger. 

He did not speak for a minute, and then Beauty 
felt that he was stroking her curls, pulling the rich 
soft masses through his fingers gently. A good-hu- 
moured woman sitting next them looked round and 
said, “ Your little sister’s tired. She ought to be ’ome 
and to bed ! ” And he answered easily, “ Yes, but it’s 
not far off now.” Then Beauty smiled a little. 

Mrs. Summers was happily out of sight, buried be- 
neath the passengers crowding to the end of the car ; 
but Beauty knew she would reassert herself when they 
came to Rye Lane, and discover her. She roused her- 
self a little after a while, and sat up. The young 
man bent nearer and spoke so that no one else could 
hear. It did not occur to her that this was in order 
not to destroy the illusion of their innocent relation- 
ship. 

“ What is your name, little girl, and where do you 
live?” he said kindly. 

“ Beauty Darling — I live with the Dresser from 


88 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


Allonby’s, 3, Pentonville Street — there she is, getting 
up now.” 

“ Beauty !” he repeated, as if the significance of it 
pleased him. “Beauty Darling! You ought to be a 
very good girl, Beauty.” 

“ Why ? ” she said, and there was a faint ridicule in 
her tone. Beauty had not found that the other girls 
at Allonby’s — even Kittie Smart and the Lilliput 
Troupe — found it obligatory to be “ very good.” 

" Because you’ve got such a beautiful face. You 
can’t have an ugly mind and ways behind that face — 
they wouldn’t match. Besides, God obviously meant 
you to live up to it — He set you your own standard 
every time you look in the glass ! ” 

Beauty felt vaguely uncomfortable. It sounded 
moral, like a lecture, and she had always wriggled 
under lectures. She wriggled a little now, and said 
“ Oh, go on ! ” with a faint laugh. 

“ I’m an artist,” the young man said in quiet ex- 
planation. He wondered why Beauty suddenly shrank 
from him, and puzzled over the problem for long 
afterwards; but it was noticeable that with regard to 
the episode of Trevor Guy Beauty never confided in 
anyone. “ My name is Michael Phayre,” he went 
on. “ I live at New Cross — but I’ll get out here.” 

He left the car at Rye Lane when they did, and 
walked along the flaring pavement with them, leaving 
them at last at the end of their street. Mrs. Sum- 
mers raised no objection for once. Perhaps the 
young man’s unobtrusive manner was his best voucher, 
or perhaps, with the shrewdness of her kind, she knew 
that he belonged to some circle above her, despite the 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 89 

frayed shirtcuffs. When he parted from them he 
lifted his cap and smiled. 

“ Miss Darling is very tired. I hope you haven’t 
far to go,” he said to Mrs. Summers. 

“ Oh, she’ll be all righ’ — she’s young, her legs don’ 
get sh’ tired,” said Mrs. Summers a trifle confusedly, 
and with a foolish smile. “ Come on, Beau’y ” — 
and she took the girl’s arm, but more as if she craved 
support than offered it. 

Beauty was sleepy still, and half exasperated. 
“ Don’t ! ” she said, shaking the woman off, so that 
Mrs. Summers nearly slipped and fell. It was Michael 
Phayre who put out his hand and caught her. There 
was a curious shadow of anxiety in his eyes as he 
watched the two figures disappear down the dark sor- 
did street into the December night; but they rested 
with more concern on the girl. 

Beauty grew used to meeting him in the tramcars, 
for he lived out at New Cross, as he had told her, and 
was attending some night classes in London. Like 
Beauty, Michael Phayre lived in an attic, but it was 
a very different type of room to hers, though it was 
his sole dwelling-place. I do not know how many 
hours or days he had spent before he found what he 
wanted in the way of a habitation within his means, 
and lodged himself and the few indispensable tools of 
his art in a large low garret under the eaves. The 
bottom half of the house was a tinware shop, but it 
was an old building, and for some obscure reason of 
the builders there was a skylight in the roof. Michael 
found some difficulty in keeping the room above freez- 
ing-point in winter in consequence ; while in summer he 


90 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

sometimes spent the' gasping night with a pipe on the 
roof, since he could climb out of his skylight did he 
so please. But he had light, and even line and wash 
drawings for indifferent papers are the better for day- 
light to see by when at work on them. He lived 
chiefly on his contributions to illustrated journalism 
since he had given up a dubious position as drawing- 
master to a very private school in the neighbourhood, 
and at the time that he met Beauty Darling he was sub- 
sisting — for he did not live — on an income little 
more than hers and far more uncertain. He did his 
own cooking, however, on an oil stove, and had learned 
to shop even more wisely than she. 

Life is varied in Peckham. There are residents 
who live in large old-fashioned houses with a drive 
to the front door, and coachhouses in the background. 
These are mostly doctors, in which the neighbourhood 
is more than common rich. But even houses rented 
at £45 a year have stabling. On the other hand, one 
cannot call a locality expensive in which one can get 
“ good beds ” for fivepence or clothes at a few shill- 
ings. Men’s trousers ranged as low as is. nd., 
braces could be had for fourpence, and boots for a shill- 
ing. Michael Phayre had often looked at the trous- 
ers, tied up in bunches and swinging free under the 
awning of the store, and wondered if he should ever 
wear them. But the speculation ended in a laughing 
shrug, since he rarely had is. nd. to spend on clothes. 
He studied the people in the streets, however, and 
made drawings of them afterwards. His line draw- 
ings of the population of cheap neighbourhoods were 
amongst his most lucrative efforts, and found a readier 
market than the bold wash or watercolour that he 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 91 

loved. They made the better classes to laugh, and 
Michael himself to weep. 

Sometimes Beauty Darling did not see him for a 
week at a time, and then she almost forgot him; but 
when he turned up again the acquaintance slowly 
progressed. He would not come to the theatre, 
though she asked him. He had no desire to see her 
with paint on her face and in scanty clothes, he said, 
and Beauty retorted that if he were cheeky he might 
stay away. On the other hand, she flatly declined to 
be taken to the National Gallery to see pictures; she 
hated pictures, was all that she would admit, and in- 
deed he found that she despised the profession of a 
painter to a puzzling degree. He thought it was 
simply ignorance, for Beauty never gave away that 
dark portion of her life in which Art had played as 
a grim fate. It was, however, with a natural dread 
of going where artists might be supposed to congre- 
gate that she shunned all picture galleries, and would 
never accompany Phayre to anything more pictorial 
than a cinematograph show. The young man did take 
her for a walk in one of the parks one afternoon, but 
he was not an escort to be proud of in his old stained 
blue serge, and Beauty yawned openly at his conversa- 
tion, which seemed to her a little mad. 

“ Do look at those small fleecy clouds, Beauty,” he 
said, pointing to the cold far sky above the tree-tops, 
instead of staring at other youths and maidens like 
themselves. “ Some cherub has certainly lost his 
wings ! ” 

“ Oh, go on, Mr. Phayre ! ” 

It was no better if the conversation took a more 
comprehensible turn. Beauty had gone so far as to 


92 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

confide her unknown parentage to him, representing 
it with a glamour of the penny novelette upon it, and 
herself as the last scion of some graceless but high- 
born pair. 

“ You know, Mr. Phayre, my mother must have 
been a lady ! ” 

“ Then of course you feel that you must always be 
one yourself, Beauty !” said Michael serenely, with a 
kindly quizzical glance at the fair little face, unspoiled 
even by the stamp that Allonby’s had already put 
upon it. 

Beauty did not feel sure that she cared for Michael 
Phayre’s point of view. It always seemed somehow 
to thrust obligations upon her that involved the harder 
virtues. How could one boast by such an admirer — 
if, indeed, he could be classed in the category at all. 
She fell back rather ruefully on the vague feeling that 
he was a gentleman, and even this she could not en- 
force upon her companions at the theatre, since they 
had never seen him. Despite his shabby coat — and 
Allonby’s judged by the broadcloth standard — • 
Beauty was sanguine that his atmosphere might make 
itself recognized, and it was another grievance that 
what small advantage she might have gained from his 
acquaintance was denied to her in the eyes of the other 
girls in her dressing-room. 

“ Beauty’s got a best boy ! ” said the “ Children’s 
Chorus ” with a giggle. “ You might have him round 
at tea-time, Beauty ! ” For it sometimes happened 
that on rehearsal days several of the younger girls 
would get out to tea at a bun-shop near Allonby’s, and 
then there were generally assignations — harmless 
enough at present — ■ and much giggling. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 93 

“ He won’t come,” said Beauty indifferently. “ Says 
he’d rather come out alone with me, and doesn’t want 
a crowd. But he talks awful rot when he does. ( / 
think he’s soft ! ” 

The Lilliput Troupe laughed unanimously, and it 
sounded like the splash of escaping water, for the con- 
versation was taking place in the wings before the 
children were marshalled on to the stage for Miss 
Edna Carruthers’s fairy song. The leading lady her- 
self looked round and said “ Sh-sh! ” but her eyes in- 
stinctively sought for and found the child who had 
a “ best boy ” and despised him — it was a mental at- 
titude she knew so well herself. There was a silent 
laugh on her own lips as her eyes fell on Beauty, half 
sullen in retrospect, her mutinous red mouth down- 
drawn over the unpalatable things that Phayre had 
said to her. Miss Carruthers was sufficiently amused 
by the incident to repeat it at the Savoy later on, when 
she was having supper with a respected Member of 
Parliament, a Satyr girl, and an extra man. The cast 
at Allonby’s did not as a rule chum with the Satyr 
girls ; there is class and class, and the Satyr girls were 
“ fasties,” as even the children knew, while the 
Allonby girls worked honestly, if mistakenly, to get 
to the top of the tree in Musical Comedy. But Miss 
Carruthers was sufficiently lifted above the heads of 
the crowd to be above class prejudice. As leading 
lady at Allonby’s it behoved her to meet Baby Sin- 
clair, who was her rival at the Satyr, so long as that 
young person did not obviously stick her tongue in her 
cheek. Miss Carruthers told the incident of Beauty 
and her boy with relish. 

“ One of our kids,” she said, “ was being ragged by 


94 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

the rest of the flock about her best boy. And she 
put her little nose in the air and said he talked awful 
rot at best — she thought he was soft! You should 
just have heard her! I don’t know what the kiddies 
are coming to.” 

“ But was she really a kid, or only goin’ it with her 
hair down her back? ” asked the extra man doubtfully, 
as soon as Miss Sinclair’s screams of laughter would 
allow him. 

“ Oh, really a kid — she doesn’t look above thirteen 
or fourteen,” said Miss Carruthers, with as shrewd a 
guess at Beauty’s real age as Edgar Allonby had made. 
“ Sweetly pretty. She’ll probably go on the Halls by 
and by, on account of her face.” 

“What is her name?” asked the M. P. with idle 
curiosity. Perhaps he wondered, as he sipped his 
champagne in defiance of the doctor, whether the 
sweetly pretty child would in some future drift to 
Savoy suppers “ on account of her face,” and perhaps 
sit at this very table — but it was more probable that 
he was thinking that Heidsieck, 1900, was a very 
sound wine. 

“ She is called Beauty Darling — ” 

“ Rippin’ ! ” broke in Miss Barbara Sinclair with a 
loud laugh. “ She ought to come to us, Miss Car- 
ruthers — she’s wasted on Allonby’s. A pretty face 
and a catchy name — that’s all we want at the Satyr. 
How she’d fetch the boys — Beauty Darling ! ” 

And that was the first time that Beauty’s name was 
spoken at the Savoy. 

Beauty herself rather liked the Satyr girls, a few of 
whom came now and then to see friends “ behind ” 
at Allonby’s. They were noisy young ladies, but 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 95 

good-natured, and their unbridled speech’ was full of 
explanation to Beauty, a trifle bewildered still by the 
suddenness of her London life, even after a year. 
They were “ fasties of course, and Allonby’s rather 
prided itself upon its morals; but they did seem to 
have a good time, and to lunch and sup out every day, 
besides being most fearfully and wonderfully dressed. 
-Edgar Allonby once defined the difference between his 
own theatre and the Satyr as the “ tone of a school.” 

“ It’s something in tradition,” he said. “ You get 
a different type of girl at the Satyr. The Manage- 
ment can’t prevent their going out to lunch and supper 
there, and other damned nonsense. Whereas if my 
girls will work, there’s nothing to prevent them getting 
to the top of the tree. They need only have a pretty 
face at the Satyr — we want voices and some training 
at Allonby’s.” 

Which statement may be accepted with reservation, 
but it was certainly due to this distinction and her 
connexion with Allonby’s that Beauty Darling ever 
gained the training that she had. Had she happened 
to get taken on at the Satyr in the first place, it is fairly 
certain that she would have learned just so much as 
enabled her to display her legs and smile at the gal- 
lery; but she would have remained in the chorus for 
ever. At Allonby’s she was forced to work, and the 
ambition of getting “ into the bill ” was instinctively 
before her mental eyes throughout her novitiate. 
Sometimes when she was very tired — too tired to be 
clean or tidy at night — or Mrs. Summers was par- 
ticularly sodden with spirits, it might well have been 
that she regretted the small room that Mrs. Darling 
grimly supervised, and the law and order and fair 


96 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

dealing of her school-life — even the hard discipline 
of her foster-mother herself, in place of the slipshod 
nagging of the Dresser. But if her body and her in- 
stincts rebelled, her mind did not, nor would she have 
gone back to the life that had grown monotonous 
through use. For in youth any change is for the bet- 
ter. 


CHAPTER V 


r INHERE was a good deal of noise going on in No. 

6 dressing-room when Mrs. Summers brought 
up the hot water for tea, for two of the younger girls 
were having a joy-fight over the back of an old sofa, 
and Our Fannie of the Lilliput Troupe, who was al- 
ways a little excitable, began to scream from the sheer 
love of noise. Our Kittie and Beauty Darling, sitting 
side by side at their own dressing-table, were knocked 
over in the scrimmage, and swore like drummer-boys. 
For Mr. Hughes’s vocabulary had naturally been 
adopted by his Company, girls as well as men. If you 
are constantly sworn at, at rehearsal, you are bound to 
swear in your turn, since there is nothing more in- 
fectious than example. 

This largest and highest of the dressing-rooms at 
Allonby’s was supposed to accommodate ten or twelve 
girls — as a matter of fact it had sometimes held 
twenty or thirty of the big casts which were necessary 
for the elaborate productions — and was packed away 
at the top of the theatre, that its noise and disquiet 
might not disturb the privacy of the principals, who 
were much nearer the stage. Allonby’s was like a 
small town behind the scenes, with its vast cellarage 
for the storage of scenery, and its equal areas of dress- 
ing-rooms, rehearsal-rooms, offices, etc. There should 
have been space enough for the noise in No. 6 to lose 
itself in empty air before it reached the higher grades 
7 97 


98 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

of the Company. Nevertheless the commotion had 
made itself felt, as Mrs. Summers promptly explained 
to No. 6 — or, as she herself put it, “Let ’em ’ave 
it, ’eavens ’ard ! ” her similes being mixed metaphors 
of vituperation and atmospheric phenomena. 

“ Well, I never ’eard — Miss Carlos, you shut up 
that noise! Mr. Jester ’as the room below and ’e’s 
going to report you to Mr. Hughes. I’m come up to 
know what is going on ! There’s ’alf the theatre going 
to make a deputation to the Management and ’ave you 
turned off — there is! Now don’t you go running 
into me, you Kittie — I’ll let you ’ave this boiling 
water over your impudent legs if you do ! — And 
don’t you use such language, Beauty Darling, before 
little girls younger than yourself. I should think 
you’d be ashamed! You’ll all get sacked at treasury 
if this goes on.” 

Treasury is on Friday, when salaries are paid and 
notices given if anyone is to be dismissed. Mrs. Sum- 
mers’s breathless harangue caused a minute’s lull, but 
Our Fannie’s hysterical spirits were not to be damped. 
She pretended to faint at the threats, and with a 
“Catch me, darling! Oh Bertie, I’m going!” 1 fell 
into Our Kittie’s arms with such effect that they both 
went down together and nearly brought Mrs. Sum- 
mers down too. Beauty caught and saved the kettle, 
with an eye to tea, but Poppie Gurney — Our Poppie 
— seized Mrs. Summers round the waist and waltzed 
her off down the long room, depositing her breathless 
in a corner. 

“ There, ole dear! that’s what comes of raiding No. 

1 This was a phrase of a popular song of the day — “ Oh 
Bertie, I’m going — I’m going to the,” etc. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 99 

6 ! — oh my breeches ! Ain’t somebody going to make 
tea? ” 

It was Matinee day, and no chance to get out to a 
tea-shop, so the different dressing-rooms had their 
separate trays, and very often their own tea-things and 
tea. Spirit stoves were not allowed at Allonby’s, so 
the kettles had to be boiled on the dressing-room fires 
— poor little fires enough in the less important rooms, 
and in No. 6 hardly capable of warming one end of 
the barn-like place. But to save time those who were 
friendly with the stage-doorkeeper got him to heat the 
water first in the office, he being the proud possessor 
of a large and open grate. He had been boiling his 
kettle the first time that Beauty had ever seen that 
stage-door, but on that occasion for his own accommo- 
dation. 

Most of the principals made tea into a cosy little af- 
fair on Matinee days, and invited each other, or had 
friends from outside smuggled in; though it not in- 
frequently happened that the voice of the call-boy 
warned the party that a cue was imminent, and the 
hostess would rush away to flirt with the villain or the 
Comedian to inform the audience that “ Jolly Jane 
Jaggers was a jujube joy!” — from which assurance 
they seemed to derive much satisfaction — returning 
for a second cup while other members of the cast took 
their places. Even in No. 6 the girls subscribed a few 
pence each to have a cake or buns on Matinee days, 
and took it in turn to provide sweets. This was 
one of the small expenses that made havoc of Beauty’s 
pound a week, but the obligation of her position as 
a young lady on Allonby’s salary list made it incum- 
bent on her. There was a long wait for the “ Chil- 


100 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


dren’s Chorus ” about four o’clock, when Miss Car- 
ruthers’s fairy song was over and the “ grand finale, 
and every one on” had not arrived. It was those 
long waits that led to the appalling noise of which 
the lower dressing-rooms complained, for shut ten 
or twelve girls of from thirteen to sixteen up together 
with nothing to do, and it is odds that somebody does 
not begin to find herself too big for the room. 

“ I don’t believe little Jester will split on us! ” said 
Poppie loudly, as she left Mrs. Summers puffing and 
blowing, and made a dive for the cupboard where the 
teapot lived. “ I’ll go down and give him a kiss for 
his own filthy little self to pacify him! ” 

“ You’ll blooming well drive him to it if you do! 
Jesty isn’t taking any with Us. He’s casting sheep’s 
eyes at Carruthers.” This from Our Fannie. 

“ Do let Summers get her breath and tell us if there 
really is going to be a report — ” Kittie Smart cut in 
sharply. “ You were making a holy row just now, 
Nellie, and Fannie squeaks like a weasel.” 

Here somebody set up a new version of an old 
song, and “ Pop ! pop ! pop ! goes the weasel ! ” re- 
sounded on all sides. A girl named Gertie Grierson, 
who could reproduce sounds like the drawing of corks, 
was in great request, and started her accomplishment 
at once, jumping round the room like a frog, followed 
by five other girls all singing louder than they did 
for Mr. Hughes’s worst invectives. Mrs. Summers 
stamped her foot in useless rage. 

“ You little fools ! You’re cutting your own throats. 
Mr. Jester 9 as complained, I tell you, and so ’as Miss 
Cateret.” 

There was a new chorus. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING ioi 

“ Cateret doesn’t dress on the floor beneath ” — 
“ Unless she was in Jester’s dressing-room” — 
“ That’s it, the dirty swine — and then they want to 
foul us ! ” — “ They’d better clean their own sty first ” 
— “ Well, let them complain! They’ve got to explain 
how Cateret heard, and where she was, anyhow.” 

Our Kittie, always the executive member of the 
party, started this defence. It forced a breathing 
space and hushed the twelve voices, into which silence 
Mrs. Summers incontinently rushed, seizing her 
chance. 

“ That’s none of your business, I should think, Miss 
Smart. What is, is that when the run’s over you 
won’t be on in the new piece. Mark my words ! Mr. 
Hughes is as angry as ’e can be.” 

There was a fresh outburst. “ Who cares for old 
Hughes?” — “ Let him be stuffy!” — “ He’s the stuf- 
T *st of all stuffy stage-managers ! — Stuff! stuff! 
stuff!” 

And then the young voices broke into chorus again 
by common consent, this time of a music-hall song — 

“ We’re all waiting for the stuff-stuff ! — 

Come along! Send him on! — the nine-fifteen! 

Rolling up the Supers with his stuff! stuff! stuff! — 
Stuffy ! Where the devil have you been ? ” 

r (Needless to say the original ditty is “ Puff ! Puff! ” 
and refers to a railway strike.) 

“ Much we care for old Hughes,” said Poppie reck- 
lessly. “ It’s Papa who bosses the salary list.” 

“ It’s going to be Mr. Hughes this time,” said Mrs. 
Summers with a grim triumph. “ Mr. Allonby is go- 
ing to take a holiday. ’E’s ill.” 


102 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ I don’t believe it ! ” 

“ Summers, where did you hear that? ” 

“ I say, it will be hell if Hughes really does engage 
for the new piece ! ” 

“ Papa was all right on Friday. I met him in the 
wings. He was with Carruthers, as chirpy as a 
cricket, the ole dear ! ” 

“ Well, ’e’s down with influenza, or something,” 
said Mrs. Summers shortly, picking up the kettle and 
beating a retreat with it. “ I just ’eard from ’Ollis ” 
(the stage-doorkeeper) “ ’e’s not coming ’ere for a 
long time, and Mr. Hughes is going to be boss. And 
you’re all on the black list,” she added as she banged 
the door after her. 

Tea was rather a depressed function for a few min- 
utes. If what Summers said was true, and Syddie 
Hughes had a say in casting the next piece, the occu- 
pants of No. 6 were not so certain of favour as if Edgar 
Allonby himself were in supreme authority as usual. 
The younger girls were not popular with Hughes, on 
account of their natural tendency to unruliness. He 
made less allowance for them than the experienced, 
broader-minded “ Papa,” who, besides, was not so 
often in contact with their uproarious spirits. Hughes 
had many small grievances against No. 6 dressing- 
room; he was overworked and often worried with the 
control of the big cast, and he disliked handling chil- 
dren’s choruses, even though he had nothing to do 
with their actual training — Miss Praed and the Mu- 
sical Director did that. Few audiences realize what 
the production of a modern Musical Comedy means, 
with its elaborate schemes of colour, its concerted 
music, its special “ turns,” its drilled masses of people 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 103 

to move on the stage. There were half-a-dozen dif- 
ferent authorities for the different departments, all 
woven together under the guiding hand of the Stage- 
Manager. Edgar Allonby was usually his own pro- 
ducer — a position very different to that of Manager, 
Stage-Manager, or Business Manager. But if he were 
really invalided, and Sydney Hughes were obliged to 
produce and stage-manage too, the girls foresaw 
trouble. Apart from this, there was really a genuine 
feeling for “ Papa,” whose qualities were those that 
had endeared him to his Companies, and an honest 
regret if he were to be laid up. No wonder that less 
cake was eaten than usual, and that a last drain of col- 
oured water was left in the teapot! 

Before this unusual finale, however, a warning had 
come to No. 6 that a few of their number were wanted 
in the ball scene. Amongst them was Beauty Dar- 
ling, whose voice had improved under training, and 
who was advanced to singing in several choruses. 
She had now really been nearly twelve months at 
Allonby’s, and was in her sixteenth year ; but the piece 
that had run so successfully for two years was nearing 
its close, and would be withdrawn at the end of the 
season, and a new one put into rehearsal. The chorus 
knew that the principals had already been “ cast,” 
though alterations might take place in the distribu- 
tion of parts ; but for themselves they had not worried 
at present, as the great bulk of the performance was 
not yet finally settled. Voices would be tried, of 
course, before the re-engagements, and there might 
be some weeding out; but Allonby’s had a reputation 
for keeping its people — unlike the Sovereignty, which 
would advertize for thirty new girls at the end of a 


104 THE CAREER OF, BEAUTY DARLING 

run, and take them on in place of older hands, par- 
ticularly if premiums came with them, though from 
some very doubtful source. Mrs. Summers’s an- 
nouncement was the first shadow of doubt that had 
fallen on those of the chorus who had been on Allon- 
by’s salary list for some time. 

Beauty Darling was the last to leave the dressing- 
room, in the wake of six of her comrades. An inev- 
itable vanity made her turn to the glass for a last 
look at her vivid face under the gipsy cap of bright 
scarlet and gold coins — the dress was a stage Bo- 
hemian’s — and what she saw pleased her. 

“ Keep me a scrap of cake — I haven’t finished,” 
she said hastily to Kittie, turning away at last. “ We’re 
only on for ten minutes.” 

“ All right — but you’ll be late, Beauty • — do cut 
and run ! ” 

Kitty spoke anxiously, her active mind already at 
work on Hughes’s future power of retaliation and 
Summers’s warning. 

“ Now, ladies, ladies ! Miss Darling, you’re asked 
for!” 

Beauty did run, but the other girls had gone on 
ahead; and in the doorway leading to the wings she 
encountered the Stage-Manager. 

“ Now, Miss Darling, go on, please! You’re late! ” 
he said sharply, with a glance that was certainly not 
approval over her shining hair and small bright figure. 

But for that last glance in the glass Beauty might 
have been wise ; but it seemed an outrage that a man’s 
eyes could fall on her and not endorse the approval 
she herself had felt. She lifted her scornful chin — 
the most expressive feature she possessed — and 
* 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 105 

looked at Hughes under her level brows, tossing back 
the glory of her curls. 

“ They don’t seem to have rung down ! ” she said 
insolently. “ I dare say I shall come in for the call ! ” 

“ Damn it, that’s not your business ! ” said the Man- 
ager, swinging round in a sudden fury. This child’s 
impertinence was the last straw on a back nearly 
broken by overweight of responsibility. “ You will 
be in your place at the cue, or you’ll get your notice. 
I won’t have anyone at Allonby’s who is not punctual. 
You will be fined anyway.” 

Beauty slipped past him, very angry and rather 
frightened. But she did not take the incident seri- 
ously until Mrs. Summers’s news was confirmed — 
Edgar Allonby was really ill, with appendicitis and not 
influenza, and was to undergo an operation imme- 
diately. It was not likely that he would be seen at 
the theatre for many weeks, and in the meantime 
Hughes was to arrange such details of the cast as had 
been left open, and to take the first rehearsals in con- 
junction with a producer engaged by Allonby. It was 
hoped that “ Papa ” would be about again in time 
to see to the final polishing before the piece began its 
run. 

Beauty wished that she had been a little more dis- 
creet with regard to the omnipotent Stage-Manager, 
and had not trusted so much to Allonby’s original in- 
terest in her. She wished it more in a week or so when 
the cast was finally filled up, and she was told that her 
services were not required in the new production, 
though her name and address were noted in case there 
should be something to offer her “ later on.” Most of 
the extra girls in the Children’s Chorus had been re- 


10 6 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


engaged, and it was only their pantomime engage- 
ments that prevented the Lilliput Troupe from remain- 
ing ; Beauty Darling’s “ getting the push ” was, there- 
fore, the more marked, and she felt it keenly. If 
Allonby had been at hand it might not have happened, 
though Beauty would certainly have found herself in 
disgrace for her impertinence to the Stage-Manager, 
and have got a “ dressing down ” from one or other 
of the authorities ; but Allonby was a shrewd man, and 
never forgot the merest cipher of his company who 
had excited his interest. He being beyond reach of 
appeal, however, Beauty found herself thrown out of 
the means of earning her living, and not even with a 
chance of touring with the discarded piece, for Hughes 
had the final voice in selecting the provincial companies 
as well. 

The taking her name and address was a mere form, 
as Beauty soon learned, and out of sight was con- 
veniently out of mind. For the first time the ex- 
treme consequences of her independence in running 
away from the roof that sheltered her, and the food 
regularly provided, were brought home to the girl. 
She did not by any means think of returning to Wan- 
dlebridge or asking shelter : that was a last strait that 
had not even dawned on her comprehension. But 
she felt very blank, and much more ak if cut adrift 
than she had in the excitement and terror of her first 
plunge into the world. There had been the novelty 
and sense of adventure to keep her spirits up then, 
and the very real shock and horror of the night be- 
fore had in some sort made the severance easy, or at 
least imperative. During the past year, curiously 
enough, she had come to regard Allonby’s as her home, 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 107 

and become much more dependent upon the theatre 
than she had been on Mrs. Darling’s cottage. To be 
exiled from the familiar sights and sounds and smells 
seemed impossible to realize, but there was no chance 
of appeal to any other authority. The Management 
was sufficiently upset and disorganized by Allonby’s 
absence in the crisis of a new piece to be produced, to 
make it intolerant of any minor worries. A protest 
from one of the chorus that might at least have met 
with a hearing at other times would now be peremp- 
torily dismissed. 

On the Friday after which she received her notice 
Beauty went to the Theatrical Ladies’ Working Guild 
in absolute depression of spirits. She had been in- 
troduced to this institution in the first place by Kittie 
Smart soon after she first went on at Allonby’s, for 
the Lilliput Troupe were all of them “ Mrs. Carson’s 
girls ” in the days when that most kindly lady gath- 
ered all classes of the Profession around her in the 
large, bare room in Russell Street, Covent Garden. 
Beauty was a fairly constant worker, not only out of 
gratitude — for the. Guild had practically clothed her 
since her few clothes had worn out — but because she 
liked work and liked the atmosphere of the cheerful 
place where everybody chattered and stitched and had 
tea for the large sum of twopence. The best-known 
actresses on the English stage would sometimes take 
— and do still take — the chair at the Guild after- 
noons, and, sitting at the head of the table, would talk 
to the members of the Committee (who usually sat 
next to them) and bite off their cotton in a perfectly 
human manner, while the general buzz of conversa- 
tion ran on undisturbed from three to five o’clock. 


io8 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


punctuated by demands for “ Something else to do, 
please,” or “What is this garment? How am I sup- 
posed to make it up? ” 

Beauty had always been clever with her fingers, and 
had she had a little more educated taste or a sugges- 
tion to follow, could have altered her own clothes so 
that they would have fitted and suited her, however 
they began life originally. For she was largely imita- 
tive, and her ideal was at present confined to the ap- 
pearance of the stars of Allonby’s, or those well-known 
Musical Comedy ladies whom she saw at the Guild. 
Both were beyond her compass, but she faithfully imi- 
tated in cheap materials whenever possible, especially 
the exaggerations. Now, the clothes for disposal at 
the Guild (and God knows what distress they have 
not relieved!) are chiefly those made on Friday after- 
noons for maternity cases, and a certain amount of 
strong underclothing; but since the Committee plead 
also for “ any old things the better off amongst the 
members can spare — rags, if you like!” — there is 
a most wonderful second-hand department which not 
only supplies those who have to “ dress ” their own 
parts on third-rate tours, but actually clothes the very 
poorest of the profession — the poor Mummers who 
are still to be seen in booths at country fairs, or those 
who must be respectably dressed somehow if they are 
to obtain engagements and have literally no resources. 
The most wonderful resurrections take place out of 
old scraps of lace and flowers that your kitchen-maid, 
dear madam, would pronounce “ done for ” ; and when 
you take mental notes of an exquisite creation worn 
by Miss So-and-so in such-and-such a new drama, 
you may remember with amazement that there is an- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 109 

other end to. The Profession in whose depths have 
sunk people struggling to cover their overworked 
bodies, and thankful for anything that will at least 
look decent on the outside. 

Into this class came Beauty Darling with her im- 
perative necessities, explained by Our Kittie as an 
applicant who had no mother even to stitch for her, 
and was trying to earn for herself as a respectable 
citizen and live on a pound a week. They were very 
good to her at the Guild — they always are. Even 
the members’ subscription of a shilling a year was not 
demanded from her for that first year at any rate, 
and when anything prettier or more suitable to her 
than usual happened to come in, it was set aside, even 
though she had not begged of late. 

As soon as she could afford it, of course, the girl 
spent money on impossible blouses and strings of 
beads; but she got frightened if she found herself 
running into debt, and the enforced neatness of her 
schooldays kept her somewhat within bounds. At the 
Guild she was just a common little girl dressed in a 
stained and faded coat and skirt, a cotton blouse with- 
out a collar — and with an exquisite face. People 
liked to look at her sitting at the same table, her busy 
hands at work on the coarse baby-linen over which 
her curls fell, while her equally busy lips carried on 
a low babble with the girl next to her — it was per- 
haps as well for the illusion that the good-hearted 
women at the other end of the theatrical ladder could 
not always follow what those dewy red lips were say- 
ing. Yet Beauty was on these occasions a well-be- 
haved child, with a decent pronunciation of English, 
for she unconsciously dropped back into the school 


no THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


language and the school manner in the cleaner atmos- 
phere around her. At the theatre she was louder, 
coarser voiced, and far more vulgar than she would 
ever have been in her foster-mother’s cottage. 

On this particular Friday, however, Beauty was so 
far depressed that she did not trouble to find a seat 
near some one that she knew, but sat down at the end 
of a table where a pretty Musical Comedy actress 
was taking the chair, and began to sew without a 
word to anybody. One or two older women looked 
at her and smiled covertly as they might at the picture 
of a child, or a rose-tree, or any other lovely and 
innocent thing; though Beauty was not dressed for 
the part. It happened to be the fashion just then to 
wear hats modelled on a Chinese mandarin’s — broad- 
brimmed flat hats, with a petticoat of lace resembling 
a lamp-shade. In Bond Street these hats were models 
of artistic triumph; but they were unfortunately pop- 
ular and easy of imitation, so that they floated down 
through many grades, until in such hands as Beauty’s, 
they assumed the appearance of an immense dressing- 
table with a rather soiled garniture depending from it. 
Underneath the hateful lace Beauty’s fringed blue 
eyes sometimes rewarded the spectator by an upward 
glance as she asked for the loan of scissors or cotton. 

She had not been working long when Kittie Smart 
herself entered and took the seat next to her. Beauty 
had not known that Kittie was coming to-day, but 
she was glad of the chance of discussing the changes 
at Allonby’s with her, away from the theatre. 

“ Papa’s losing a lot of his old girls,” remarked * 
Kittie, as she threaded her needle. “ You’re going 
and Gertie Grierson’s married — oh, hadn’t you 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING m 


heard? Yes, she was the oldest of our lot, you know 
— nineteen, and she married Toddy Bute, the Business 
Manager at the Temple Bar, and they've gone out 
with a crowd in ‘ Rock the Cradle.’ ” 

“Not their own?” said Beauty, staring with all 
her blue eyes. 

“Not half! Toddy was a good little sort, but he 
hadn’t any money. It’s Gills and Gillett’s crowd. 
She left soon after you.” 

“ We’re leaving, too,” went on Kittie in the pause. 
“All the Troupe are going to Dublin for the Panto. 
You know we had a Panto engagement this winter 
but Hughes wanted us to start in the new piece. 
There isn’t much for us to do in it, though, and we’ve 
been thinking of making a change for some time.” 

“Panto!” said Beauty, coming out of the reverie 
into which the news about Gertie Grierson had plunged 
her. “Isn’t it rather — rough ? ” 

“ Not if you’re a Special. The Troupe have their 
own dances, and stick together. We needn’t herd 
with the Knockabouts or the Supers. And the pay’s 
awfully good — we’re getting two pounds each.” 

Beauty meditated. She had never been in Panto- 
mime, and had avoided going on tour because all the 
London girls said that it was so hard to get back 
again. Tour was supposed to be rather fun, espe- 
cially if you went to the No. i towns — Manchester 
and Liverpool, Birmingham and Brighton — which 
sometimes had the London Companies themselves; 
but Beauty had always understood that the annual 
Pantomimes in the same towns were recruited by 
some very queer characters as well as the stars whose 
names appeared in big letters on the hoardings. Even 


1 12 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


the great attractions, such as the contortionists and 
acrobats who played the parts of animals, were not 
remarkable for sobriety or politeness when out of 
their skins, and as to the “ special turn ” people from 
the music-halls, they were pronounced “a holy ter- 
ror ” by anyone who had done Pantomime work. 
Nevertheless the money sounded attractive, for if a 
girl as young as Kittie Smart, and one of a troupe, 
got two pounds a week, Beauty might herself hope to 
do the same. 

“ Who’s sending it out?” she asked. 

“ Bent and Bent. Don’t you know Val Bent, the 
Agent? If you like to come round with me to-mor- 
row morning I’ll introduce you. I wish you would 
come, too, Beauty! It would be twice as jolly if we 
could get some decent girls to join.” 

“ Perhaps they’ve settled,” said Beauty uncertainly. 
She was always rather timid about taking a new step, 
and Pantomime was a leap in the dark. 

“ No, I’m sure they want people still, though they’ve 
got all their principals. You ought to get chorus 
easily, and an understudy.” 

Beauty met Kittie in Maiden Lane next day, and 
was conducted by her up a dark and carpetless stair- 
case and into a large room whose permanent furni- 
ture seemed to consist of a chair and a small table, 
on which was a Remington typewriter worked by a 
youth with a spotted face and a familiar manner. 
There were very few other resting-places in the room, 
but it was full of people of all ages and both sexes, 
sitting on anything they could accommodate them- 
selves to, and when there was not even a narrow 
window sill or coal scuttle, standing about limp and 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 113 

weary. The prevailing type of woman was very 
golden as to hair, pink as to cheeks, and bistred 
round the eyes; and the men were correspondingly 
unwholesome without the paint. Nothing in this 
world resembles the unsuccessful Actor at twelve 
o’clock in the day except himself, and simile is use- 
less. He must be seen to be believed in. 

When Beauty and Kittie entered, the youth at the 
typewriter was just dealing with an importunate lady 
who had been there since ten, and had grown unwise 
through desperation. 

“ Can’t I see Mr. Bent for one minute ? I only 
want to hear from him — ” 

“ You’ll see him in your turn. When he’s disen- 
gaged. He won’t see anyone now,” said the clerk 
rudely. He patted another girl on the shoulder and 
added something in a confidential tone, as one who 
was on intimate terms with the whole Profession; 
but the girl only giggled and allowed the familiarity. 
She did not want to spoil her chance of getting into 
that inner room where Val Bent was alternately deal- 
ing out despair and salaries ranging from one pound 
to three-ten a week. 

“ That chap’s too cheeky ! ” said Kittie below her 
breath to Beauty. “ I’d like to see him try that on 
with me!” She walked over to the typewriter and 
spoke with an insolence of authority at least equal to 
the spotted youth’s. “ Will you tell Mr. Bent I am 
waiting to see him? Miss Smart, of the Lilliput 
Troupe. We’re engaged for Dublin, and I have to 
ask him one or two questions.” 

The youth got up with sudden compliance and a 
little added respect. "All right, Miss Smart — but 
8 


i H THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

I don’t think he’ll see you just now. He’s got Mr. 
Henneage with him — ” 

But just at that moment the door opened, and a 
man with a complexion like a tallow candle and well- 
greased hair came through the crowd of waiting ap- 
plicants. One or two spoke to him effusively, for 
he was a well-known Comedian — a “ London Man,” 
as the saying goes, whose false nose and purple 
trousers were dear to the hearts of the foyer in cer- 
tain music-halls. As Mr. Henneage left, the spotted 
youth slipped into the inner sanctuary, emerging again 
to beckon Kittie in, and with Beauty hard on her 
heels the girl pushed through the crowd of jealous or 
wistful faces and into the office where Mr. Val Bent 
was engaging people for Dublin. 

“How do you do, Mr. Bent?” said Kittie coolly. 
“ This is my friend, Miss Darling. She’s playing at 
Allonby’s, but she might come with us if there’s any- 
thing open.” Not a word about her own engage- 
ment or the arrangements she had said she must 
make! Kittie knew too much to take up an Agent’s 
time. 

Mr. Bent was a tall man in a frock-coat, with a 
crimson tie. Beauty thought he was a gentleman, 
which shows that her education even in appearance 
was still incomplete. But as he had really shaved 
that morning and wore a clean collar, there was some 
excuse for her eyes, which were still bewildered by 
the next room. He looked her up and down, and 
hummed and hawed as only an Agent could, tipping 
his chair back at a reckless angle, and appearing as 
if he really did not know that fifty overstrained men 
and women were waiting a few feet away to know if 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 115 

he could grant them the right to earn their bread and 
butter for a few months at least. 

“ There’s very little left,” he said, with a slight 
smile. “Very little. What’s your line, dear?” 

“ Singing,” said Beauty. 

“ There’s not much in the chorus — all the special 
turns are filled,” he said. “ Can you dance ? ” 

“ Yes, but I’d rather sing,” said Beauty. She could 
not really dance — not as the Lilliput Troupe did, 
with trained muscles and the ease of hard work. 
Beauty had taken her turn in the dances at Allonby’s 
and picked up a few steps and the right movements; 
but she was never really a dancer and rather disliked it. 
Her voice was her strong point, if one excepted her 
face. 

“ I’m afraid I can’t offer you the singing chorus,” 
said Bent. “ But there is Cupid open in the Pageant 
of Love at the end and a nymph in the woodland 
scene.” 

“ Can’t you give her an understudy ? ” asked Kittie 
quickly. 

“ Yes, she can understudy Dandini.” (The Panto- 
mime was “Cinderella.”) 

“ What are the terms ? ” asked Beauty dubiously. 
She foresaw that Cupid’s ciostume would be an airy 
one, and the time of year was the coldest and big 
theatres always draughty. Mr. Bent saw her waver- 
ing, and put up the salary five shillings. He had 
never seen a better face for Cupid as a matter of 
fact, and had been a little put to it to fill the part. 

“ I’ll give you two pounds five,” he said, “ but 
you mustn’t tell the other girls ! ” he added, laugh- 
ing. 


ii 6 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ And how long do we rehearse ? ” Kittie cut in, 
for this touched her as well as Beauty. 

“ Three weeks.” 

“We shall pawn everything weVe got!” said 
Kittie, and Beauty’s face fell. It was not easy to 
save on her present salary so as to live for three weeks 
without any at all. 

“ You’ll be able to get it back out of the matinees,” 
said Bent carelessly. “Well, Miss Darling?” 

“ Yes, I’ll go,” said Beauty, carried away by the 
extra five shillings. Mr. Bent smiled. He was be- 
ginning to think that he might have got a bargain. 
But he shook hands with the girls with his best imita- 
tion manner, and let them out at another door on to 
the bare staircase, that their exit should not raise too 
many hopes of seeing him in the people still waiting, 
hungry and tired, in the next room. For it was near 
Mr. Bent’s luncheon-hour, and he had no intention 
of waiting for his meals. 

Kittie seized Beauty excitedly by the arm as they 
emerged into Maiden Lane again. “ That’s better 
than we hoped. Beauty! ” she said. “ You’ve topped 
us. I didn’t think Val would offer you more 
than two pounds. Won’t it be jolly being together 
again ? ” 

“ I wouldn’t have gone if you hadn’t been going,” 
said Beauty. “ I say, Kit, let’s go into a cafe and 
have something to eat. I’m starved!” (You must 
please pronounce cafe as if it were written kaif. On 
the Stage it is considered extremely witty to distort 
known words to their literal spelling.) 

So they had hot milk, for it was a cold day in 
October, and jam-roll, and Beauty found herself com- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING ny 

mitted to a new venture which might be successful 
or no. She had no experience in managing the ex- 
penses of rooms on tour, but at least Dublin would 
be a permanency, and she would not find that she had 
ordered too much food and must leave it behind her 
in moving on week by week, or have to borrow from 
her landlady to pay the porter who brought her boxes 
from the station, “till treasury night.” The two 
drawbacks were the Agent’s fees, for which she had 
not calculated, and which were heavy — io per cent, 
on the first fortnight and five throughout the tour; 
and the three weeks of rehearsal which the whole 
cast had to give without salary — for try as she 
might she had only saved two pounds by the time 
she was bound to leave London for Ireland. The 
Allonby Management could fill her place over and over 
again with girls who would come in with a premium, 
so that when she came back she would have to look 
out for fresh work. However, she meant to save in 
Dublin. That two pounds five looked a monstrous 
sum seen at a distance and in comparison with her 
thirty shillings. 

Michael Phayre came to see her off in the early 
hours of that hideous, raw morning at Euston. He 
was the only friend she had there, outside the Com- 
pany, and the sight of his kind, worn face was more 
welcome than it had ever been before. Beauty felt 
jstrange and forlorn, even with the Lilliput Troupe 
chattering all round her, and she clung to Michael 
with a trembling underlip like a child’s. 

“ Why, Beauty ! ” he said, and his own voice was 
not quite steady. “If you cry I shall take it as a 
personal compliment, and think it is parting from me 


n8 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


that has upset you! Think what a swelled head I 
shall get ! ” 

“ I wish you were coming too, Mr. Phayre,” Beauty 
said miserably. “ I wish I weren’t going — I know 
it’s going to be horrid ! ” 

He looked down at her quickly, and his delicate 
mouth contracted. It had never occurred to Beauty 
to speculate as to his age, but she always regarded 
him as so much her senior as to be bordering upon 
the thirties. It is quite possible that at this time he 
was fully twenty-five. 

“ Well, if it is horrid, and you find you can't bear 
it, you must write to me, and we will see if we can’t 
get you back. Only, what are you going to do when 
you get here, you poor waif?” he added, more to 
himself than her. 

“ Oh, go back to one of the Musical Comedy houses, 
I suppose,” said Beauty with the bliss of ignorance. 
For she had not yet experienced the horror of being 
really “ out ” and the difficulty of getting in again. 
Perhaps Michael Phayre’s experiences with unsold 
canvases made him more pessimistic than she. 

“ At all events, we will hope it won’t come to that,” 
he said gently. “ Have a good time, and try to grow 
a little, inside as well as out, Beauty.” 

That was one of his queer speeches, and Beauty 
laughed tremulously in the midst of her tears. 

“ You do say silly things, Mr. Phayre! The idea! 
You’d make a girl laugh in her coffin.” 

“ I hope not,” said Michael quietly. “ But you have 
a mind, childie, if you would only use it. Do read 
something now and then, Beauty, if it’s only the news- 
papers — you are a little citizen, and you ought to 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 119 

know what is going on in your country outside the 
narrow world behind the footlights.” 

“ Oh, I can’t bother with politics and things ! ” said 
Beauty uneasily, but as invariably happened to her 
when anyone made a suggestion she decided to buy 
the “ Daily Mail ” instead of “ Home Chat,” as she 
had intended, to look at on the journey. 

“ Nobody could talk about it even if I did know 
what the Government was doing,” she added hon- 
estly, some flash from her schooldays coming back 
across her mind when even the younger children were 
encouraged by the dauntless head mistress to under- 
stand what party was in and the meaning of the 
measures before Parliament. 

“ No, I suppose they only know what is going on 
from the allusions in the topical songs ! ” said Michael, 
with a wry smile. “ What do they talk about, 
Beauty ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know ! What’s doing in our world, 
you know, and what’s going out, and who’s in it.” 

“ Good Lord! ” said Michael softly. “ No wonder 
they are one-idead. They eat Stage and drink Stage 
and breathe Stage. They talk of nothing else and 
know nothing else. Perhaps that accounts for the 
faces.” 

He turned his far-seeing artist’s eyes on the crowd 
thronging the platform and pushing their way into 
the special that was marked “ Cinderella Pantomime 
Co.” There is always something a little abnormal in 
a Stage face if it is likely to be successful as seen 
across the footlights. The prettiness of the girls 
hurt Michael to look at, it was so insistent; the ex- 
aggerated features of the men seemed to hit him in 


120 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

the face. All of them were speaking and living in 
italics, and it appeared to have impressed their phys- 
ical appearance also. He turned back with relief to 
Beauty, though her curls were combed more over her 
eyes, and her cheap fur toque was pushed further to 
the back of her head than when he had first known 
her. 

“ Don’t try to accentuate yourself,” he said to her 
rather suddenly. “ You are quite pretty enough to 
do without it. — I’ve brought you a Christmas present 
before the time, to keep you warm on the journey.” 

She had not noticed that he carried something dark 
hung over his arm, thinking that it was her own 
travelling rug, if anything, a cheap one that she had 
bought second-hand from another girl, and which he 
had taken from her at once when he arrived. But 
her rug, she remembered now, was lying on her seat 
in the carriage which she was to share with the Lilliput 
Troupe, and Michael’s gift was a dark golf-cloak, 
lined with scarlet, that he folded over her shoulders 
at once, fastening the straps under her arms for her. 
It was a kindly thought, for the girl had not been 
able to afford a winter coat, and the serge she was 
wearing was not warm enough for the journey. 
Michael advised her to take off the toque he secretly 
loathed, and draw the quaint hood of the cloak over 
her bright, tumbled head in its place. 

“ Now you’ll be able to lean your head against the 
back of the carriage and go to sleep, as you used to 
do in the tram-cars,” he said. “ Good-bye, childie. 
Don’t forget — ” 

He paused, looking a little oddly at the flushed 
face, framed in the hood, that was raised to his. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 121 


What economies the purchase of that cloak had caused 
Michael Phayre it would be useless to ask, but the 
pinch of poverty was not harder to bear than the 
momentary temptation that he knew was only born 
of the loneliness of life and the weariness of an 
honest struggle to do the best that was in him, and 
starve the self-indulgence that lives in all men. 
Beauty was almost speechless with pleasure in her 
cloak and the natural kindness of the moment of 
parting. She looked quite a little girl, too, with her 
bright hair about her rosy face and her blue eyes 
simply full of affection. Michael had never given 
her anything so nice before; none of the men she 
knew had, in fact. Beauty loved presents, and particu- 
larly anything to wear. She lifted her warm lips to 
Phayre’s with a sudden impulse. 

“ Good-bye ! ” she said breathlessly. “ You are a 
good boy to me! I just love the cloak, and — and 
— your 

The next minute some one — the guard possibly — 
had bundled her into the carriage, and she was wedged 
in between Our Fannie and Our Kittie, feeling rather 
elated, and glad that she had made the advance. But 
she wondered, even then, why he had taken off his 
hat and stood with bared head while he had kissed 
her. . . . 


CHAPTER VI 


D UBLIN did not approve itself to Beauty in the 
first weeks she spent there. It was very cold 
weather, to begin with, and the whole Company was 
hard worked to be ready to open by Boxing Night. 
Then there was the anxiety of wondering how the 
money would last, even though the landlady of the 
theatrical lodgings she shared with some of the Lilli- 
put Troupe was obliging enough to allow her to run 
into debt, which it seemed to Beauty that she never 
really caught up with again till half-way through the 
run of the Pantomime. She dared not, anyhow, in- 
dulge herself with amusements or see much of the 
city. The trams ran her into a good deal of money, 
and by Christmas Day Kittie Smart and Beauty 
Darling were pretty well “ stony,” to use their own 
expression. Yet it would be against all theatrical 
traditions not to give gifts at festivals, though it were 
only a pennyworth of sweets, and so Beauty and her 
friends presented each other with penny toys bought 
from street vendors, or some other useless ware 
hardly more valuable, and knew that they must suffer 
in consequence at the first longed-for treasury. 

The Pantomime was certainly hard work — harder 
work than Beauty had had at Allonby’s. She 
changed her dress six times a night, for the Manage- 
ment had taken advantage of a clause in her con- 
tract to put her on in two extra scenes, and even 
122 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 123 

into the Harlequinade, which kept her up later than 
need have been. She could not complain, for she was 
anxious not to lose her place until she had at least 
paid off her debts, but she slept at nights more like 
the proverbial dog than even a tired child, and far 
into the next day, when she had to go again to the 
theatre for rehearsals as like as not. Then she 
caught a bad cold going to and from the theatre 
through the icy streets, and had to drag her tired, 
feverish little body through two performances in the 
very airy garments designed for Cupid, as well as the 
dresses of a nymph and the feathers of a human bird 
of paradise. It was fortunate for her that she had 
not been taken on to sing in the choruses, for her 
voice had been ‘overstrained, and had she had to sing 
when really hoarse it might have injured it perma- 
nently. As it was, she danced indifferently in some 
of the more crowded scenes, marched in endless 
processions when pretty girls were in request, and 
spoke a few lines in the Pageant of Love, with less 
demand upon her mental capacities than had been the 
case even at Allonby’s. The part of Dandini the page, 
which she was understudying, was of the calibre of 
most books of a Pantomime, and may be easily sam- 
pled. 

“ In truth, my Prince, the girl on whom you doat 
Is not so dusty — offer her a vote! ” 

(Howls from the gallery. The Suffragettes had been 
busy of late.) There was more of the same sort, 
easily committed to memory and rapped out with a 
wink or a kick to emphasize the frequent double allu- 
sions. The girl who was cast for Dandini was laid 


124 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

up for a week early in the run, and Beauty played the 
part ; but it was not a great effort for an intellect which 
had really been well grounded and trained two or 
three years since. All the strain came on the girl’s 
physique, somewhat weakened by an irregular life 
and careless habits, and she showed it in the sharpened 
outlines of her face and the dullness of her eyes. 

For the first three weeks it must be owned that 
Beauty did not enjoy herself at all, and wished herself 
back in London. Then came the horrors of the dress 
rehearsal, when the Company were at work for twelve 
solid hours, and the stage hands enriched the lan- 
guage with new expletives, and the girls fell half 
asleep in the dressing-rooms from sheer fatigue, or 
kept themselves awake with brandy. The opening 
night was hardly better, save that every one was thank- 
ful when it was over; but after that things gradually 
improved a little. Beauty’s youth stood her in good 
stead, and after all a change is a change, even when it 
is only from one city to another. She began to re- 
cover both her health and spirits with the receiving 
of her salary, and was soon looking better than she 
had done for a long time, almost since the first violent 
change from her old life at Wandlebridge to her new 
life of late hours, uncertain meals, and unhealthy at- 
mospheres. To be sure, the late hours and the reek of 
the theatre continued, but the air even of Dublin 
seemed to agree with Beauty better than Peckham 
and Maida Vale. She was now just seventeen, and 
since she was safe from likely interference she told 
the truth about her age, though had she kept to her 
first assertion to Edgar Allonby she would have been 
nineteen. Girls of seventeen are sometimes called 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 125 

“ kids ” on the Stage in a kind of indulgent admira- 
tion, but they are considered as grown-up, and cer- 
tainly ripe for mischief. 

The mischief was not far to seek at the Pantomime 
that year. Every girl in the Company had her 
“ boys,” either inside or outside the theatre, and some- 
times both. The Lilliput Troupe had made the ac- 
quaintance of a wild group of medical students who 
took them out en masse and invaded their lodgings so 
that it was difficult to tell whose special property they 
were considered, and if Our Fannie were sitting on 
Mickey Burke’s knee at teatime one day it was ten to 
one she would be sharing the arm-chair with Teddy 
Ryan to-morrow, while Our Nellie would take her 
place with Mickey. Beyond some horse-play and a 
little licence there was very little harm done, for Kittie 
had sharp eyes and at the least signs of hysteria she 
spoke her mind and called her friends to order. 

“ Fannie was going to make a fool of herself over 
Teddy, so I tipped him the wink to turn over to Our 
Dollie,” she told Beauty Darling coolly. “ He’s a 
good little chap — he’ll play the game. Fannie’s al- 
ways the worst to manage, and the fellows run after 
her because of the dimple on her nose ! ” 

It was true that Our Fannie had this distinguishing 
feature, and that she proved seductive to anything 
under thirty; but there were probably psychological 
reasons that Kittie did not stop to fathom. Beauty 
shrugged her shoulders. “If I were Fannie I’d 
smack you for that ! ” she said lazily. 

“ She doesn’t know — she thinks it’s Dollie. But 
Mickey Burke has taken her on, so it doesn’t matter,” 
said Kittie easily. Truly the loves of the early ’teens 


126 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


are reversible! “Are you coming in to tea to-day, 
Beauty?” she went on. “Do! Teddy’s bringing a 
new boy.” 

“ I’m afraid I’m on with the understudies,” said 
Beauty regretfully. “ There’s a rehearsal at two ; but 
I’ll see.” 

She did, however, manage to get back at half-past 
four, to find tea in full swing, and the room smelling 
of buns and smoke, for it was packed with girls 
munching and young men with cigarettes. Not being 
one of the Troupe, Beauty was somewhat of an out- 
sider and owned no particular “ boy,” but she was 
fairly familiar with the students and was greeted cor- 
dially. She sat down near Kittie, who was in charge 
of the tea-tray, and fell upon the remains of the feast, 
for she was really tired and hungry, nor did she notice 
who was supplying her with food until Teddy Ryan 
said, “ May I introduce my friend Mr. Mannering, 
Miss Darling?” and she remembered that there was 
to be a “ new boy ” to add to the festivity. 

Mannering merited the term less than the other 
youths, for he was seven-and-twenty — ten good 
years older than Beauty if one counts by actual time, 
but not much ahead of her in other essentials save the 
logic of an active brain. Beauty never troubled to 
think. George Mannering thought a good deal, and 
though it did not make him wiser it gave him a spu- 
rious knowledge. In appearance he was tall and well 
set-up, though slight, with reddish hair, a fair skin, 
and grey eyes — rather a personable young man to 
Beauty’s mind as she thanked him for the cake which 
he handed to her. Beauty seldom smiled as the other 
girls at the Satyr or Allonby’s, to show her teeth, 


’THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 127 

though they were small and white. Her lips pouted 
more naturally than parted, and her eyes were most 
beautiful when wide open and not narrowed by laugh- 
ter. Young Mannering promptly began to talk to 
her, and his steady gaze upon her face told Beauty 
that he was quite ready to be an admirer. 

“ I’m clinical assistant to out-patients at the hos- 
pital,” he explained, and she opened her eyes a little 
wider, for the other youths were merely students. 
“ I'm sufficiently qualified to prescribe for you if you 
like to fall down and break your leg! ” 

“ Thank you for nothing ! ” Beauty retorted. 
“ You can keep your doctoring for the hospital.” 

“ You might give me a little practice.” 

She laughed, stretching out her hand to show him 
an ugly cut on her wrist gained that afternoon by trip- 
ping over some scenery that was piled up in the dusk 
where it certainly should not have been. He uttered 
an exclamation and proceeded to bathe the wound with 
his handkerchief and some cold water, afterwards bind- 
ing it up scientifically, while the other students offered 
him jeering advice and ludicrous comments. 

“Make it figure-of-eight bandaging, George!” 

“ Stitch it up, old man ! ” 

“ Galvanic cautery — ” 

“ Play fair, Georgie ! Students admitted for train- 
ing while the great man operates ! ” 

But Mannering took very little notice. “ Come and 
sit by the window and let me tie it up,” he said quietly. 
“ You’ll have a scar if you aren’t careful. Get out, 
you young devils ! ” He swung his arm and knocked 
a couple of the boys backwards into easy-chairs, where 
they toppled on to the girls and set up a fresh uproar. 


128 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


Under cover of the noise Mannering bent down and 
looked into Beauty’s face. 

“ I ought to kiss the place and make it well ! ” he 
said. 

“ Thanks — the remedy’s worse than the disease ! ” 
she retorted smartly. 

“ Never mind — you will let me some day?” he 
said with a slight pressure on the hand he still held. 
“ What a pretty name you have ! I couldn’t have 
chosen better for you myself — Beauty Darling!” 

She laughed and tossed back her curls, but her heart 
beat pleasantly, and when he told her later that he 
should come round to-morrow to see how her hand 
was, and she was not to attempt to dress it without 
him, she did not say him nay, though she knew she 
must take off the extemporary bandage for the night’s 
performance. On the whole Beauty was inclined to 
like young Mannering and to encourage him. He 
was the first young man who had paid her deliberate 
attention, and in the weeks which followed she ac- 
cepted his presents and companionship, until the inti- 
macy was such an established thing that even the 
Troupe ceased joking her about “ Georgie Porgie.” 
Hitherto Beauty’s experiences had been limited to one 
actual assault by an elderly man, a little chaff and ad- 
vances from shopboys and youths of their class, and 
some unwelcome attentions from the opposite sex in 
and about the theatre. She had never had a proper 
“ affair ” of her own, and she was a little inclined to 
lose her head at the outset. 

No one who has not lived amongst theatrical people 
in theatrical lodgings can realize the violent intimacies 
that spring up in the course of a few days. At the 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 129 

end of a week Beauty knew all of George’s family 
history that there was to know, and had told him her 
version of her foster-mother’s turning her out of the 
house and its cause. — “ There was a gentleman lodg- 
ing with us in our cottage, and I was a silly kid and 
he kissed me, and mother found out. My ! there was 
a holy row ! She said I’d done all sorts of dirty things 
that of course I hadn’t, and she threatened to beat 
me. The man had gone — I’ve never set eyes on him 
since and hope I never shall — and I simply ran out 
of the house crying, and went straight to Allonby’s 
and they took me on.” 

In outline the tale was true, and George was not 
particularly interested in cross-examining her for de- 
tails. Of course he kissed her, and said it was a 
shame and she was a plucky little girl, and Beauty put 
her head down on his shoulder and found it very nice 
to be petted. There was no talk of any engagement 
between them, still less of marriage, but it was a com- 
fortable understanding that while the Pantomime ran 
George belonged to Beauty and Beauty to George, and 
their love-making was no more harmful than that of 
the Lilliput Troupe. 

But there came a night when George’s jealousy 
was aroused, and he became the male animal fighting 
for his rights over the female. He was accustomed 
to wait for Beauty at the stage-door two or three 
evenings during the week at least — his work some- 
times prevented his doing so every night — however 
late the hour. One night she was very much behind 
her usual time, and when she appeared she was upset 
and tearful, the hands that clung to his arm were 
trembling, and she could hardly speak. 


130 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“ Beauty !” he exclaimed, drawing her out of the 
glare of the lamp into the dark of the side-street. 
“ What’s the matter ? Who has upset you ? ” 

“Oh, it’s nothing — a beast of a man frightened 
me ! ” she said with a little sob. 

She felt the muscles of the arm she held tighten, 
and his voice sounded odd as he spoke to her : “ Tell 

me who it was. I must know — ” 

“ Oh, it doesn’t matter — it’s all over — I gave him 
as good as he did me ! ” 

“ Tell me who it was,” Manner ing repeated quietly, 
and his voice was not to be denied. 

“ Charlesworth — the ‘ trick motorist,’ ” Beauty ac- 
knowledged, mentioning one of the Special Turns 
who had been engaged from the Halls as an attraction 
that had nothing to do with the Pantomime itself. 
The man in question was of the lowest type amongst 
the huge cast, a brutal, common-spoken man, whose 
iron nerves made him a most marvellous and skilful 
artist in working his little “ trick ” motor about the 
stage. Most of the girls avoided Charlesworth, for 
he was one too many for them, hardened as they were. 
Beauty had never complained of him before to-night. 

“ Tell me what he did! ” said Mannering, with his 
teeth set. 

“ Oh, there was a mistake, and some of his props 
were left about in our scene and he was mad. He 
swore at everybody, and I said to Belle Farmer that 
he’d better go amongst people who understood his 
language, and then he turned on me — ” 

“ Go on!” 

“ George! Don’t look so angry! You frighten me 
more than he did — ” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 13 1 

“ It’s all right, sweetheart — I’m not angry with 
you. Tell me what he did.” 

“ He said he’d kiss me for that, and I said he 
daren’t, and he got hold of me and pushed me down on 
a heap of curtains they’d thrown back on the O. P. 
side after the court scene. I just yelled, and Kittie 
and some of the others came and pulled him 
off.”— 

“ I should like to go back into the theatre and have 
it out with him now, if you’ll just wait for me, 
Beauty,” said Mannering with ominous quiet, but 
Beauty clung to him and implored him not to. She 
was really upset and unfit to go home alone, and with 
great reluctance he gave in to her and took her under 
his escort, going into her lodgings with her to see 
that she was quite all right, and then upsetting her 
again by the sudden violence with which he took her 
in his arms. 

“ Beauty ! Promise me you’ll never let another 
man really come near you ! ” he said in a choked voice. 
“ I can’t bear it — it’s driving me wild.” He lifted 
her easily in his arms and carried her over to the arm- 
chair, where he sat down with her on his knee. She 
was still small and slight enough to be treated like a 
child, but there was something that frightened her a 
little in his manner. 

“ Of course I won’t — silly boy ! ” she said uneasily. 
“ I hated it ! — Don’t squeeze me so, George ! I’m so 
tired to-night — ” 

“ Poor little girl ! ” he said, but his clasp tightened 
rather than loosened, and he kissed her almost roughly 
when she finally persuaded him to go away. He 
would have lingered till long after midnight if she 


132 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

would have let him but she saw him go with positive 
relief. 

He came to take her for a bicycle ride the next day. 
Beauty had learned sufficiently to get her balance on 
another girl’s bicycle in her schooldays, and since she 
had known George Mannering he had taken her out 
cycling whenever weather permitted and he could get 
an afternoon off. It suited Beauty, and she rode well 
and untiringly. They went out toward Mullingar, 
and were clear of the city itself in a quarter of an 
hour. The afternoon was cloudy but not very cold, 
and the country had that intensely quiescent appear- 
ance that it gains in the early days of February. It 
was so toned in sad shades of brown and grey that it 
seemed impossible it could ever revive to more vivid 
colours. Far from suggesting spring, the very 
ploughshares slowly turning the sod seemed to be 
softly preparing the earth for a grave. Everything 
was very dead, and the low skies were full of tears to 
weep for pity. 

The sombre landscape seemed to affect George 
Mannering, for he hardly spoke as they ran smoothly 
side by side through wet lanes and muddy roads; but 
he looked round at his companion constantly and as 
if he could not look long enough or satiate himself, 
with a kind of stealthy hunger. Beauty was worth 
looking at; the dull afternoon did not affect her be- 
cause, as Michael Phayre had said in despair, she had 
never learned to see with her wonderful eyes. She 
was hoping that it would not rain, because it was so 
beastly riding in wet clothes, and she was a little 
afraid that her bicycle might skid on the slippery roads 
— it was a free-wheel and a good machine that George 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 133 

had hired for her. She liked riding it; the easy mo- 
tion suited her young body without tiring her, and 
sent the blood flying through her veins. How pretty 
she was! How pretty! The wind of their going 
had brought the colour to her cheeks like the warm 
side of a peach, her eyes were full of light, and her 
loose, curly hair was blown back round her cap like 
an aureole. That vivid, breathing loveliness of life 
and colour had fired the blood of men long past their 
prime — it went to George Mannering’s head like new 
wine. The natural physical jealousy of the night be- 
fore had roused the latent Man in him to demand pro- 
prietary rights in the Woman, which so far had merely 
been the passive agent in a boy and girl love-affair. 

Suddenly it began to rain, a gust of wind bringing 
up a wintry squall and threatening the cyclists with a 
downpour. The wind drove the rain slanting at their 
unprotected bodies, and threatened to drench them be- 
fore they could find shelter. It was so fierce and so 
unexpected that they had no time to consider whether 
they could reach the next village, or whether a group 
of leafless trees would afford them protection, and it 
caught them between the barren stone walls guarding 
the dim brown fields. 

“ Ride as hard as you can, Beauty ! ” George called 
across the storm. “ There’s a barn in the next field 
— we’ll try to get in there.” 

The girl was on the weather side, so that the wall 
afforded her some slight protection, but the young 
man caught the whole brunt of it, and by the time 
he had succeeded in unlatching the gate of the field 
and had hurried the girl through, his jacket was 
streaked with the rain. Neither of them had brought 


134 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

mackintoshes, but Beauty, sheltered under the walls, 
had fared much less the worse. The heavy barn door 
yielded to Mannering’s attack upon it and' slowly 
opened to admit them to a large storage place, only 
encumbered with some farm implements and a wagon 
or so. It was at least dry, and Mannering pushed 
the door close to keep out the rain, and leaned the 
two bicycles against the wall. Then he turned to the 
girl, and seizing her almost roughly, kissed her hair 
and lips and eyes, whose beauty still stung his mem- 
ory though he could hardly see her in the dim light. 

“ Fve wanted to do that for the last half-hour!” 
he said in a queer, choked voice. “ My God, child ! 
but you are lovely ! ” 

Beauty was startled. She liked the compliment, and 
was flattered by the very real feeling of the man’s 
tones; but even the shadow of passion made her catch 
her breath with a little fear, and she was always half 
afraid of being alone with a lover when he first be- 
came in earnest. She pushed George away from her 
with a little practical exclamation : 

“ I say, you are wet ! I hope you won’t get a chill. 
What shall we do? Your coat is soaking! ” 

“ Never mind ! ” he said impatiently. “ I’ll take my 
coat off — we can’t ride on or back till the rain is 
over. It will have time to dry. Don’t be so cold, 
Beauty ! ” 

“ I’m not cold,” said the girl resentfully. “ But I 
don’t want you to be ill — I know I shouldn’t see you 
for weeks if you were! Your own people would 
come and take possession of you as you told me they 
always do, and they’d nurse you, and I shouldn’t be 
allowed to come anywhere near.” She cuddled her 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 135 

soft cheek against his wet shoulder, and looked up 
with deep laughing eyes. “ George, do take off that 
wet coat ! ” 

“ In a minute,” he said hurriedly. His eyes, more 
used to the light now, had seen a ladder leading up to 
a loft, and he climbed up to investigate, finding — as 
he had hoped — that it was stored with trusses of 
hay. He called down to Beauty to follow him, and 
when she did so he heaped some of the sweet dried 
grasses into a great nest, and divesting himself of his 
wet coat, threw himself down on the soft resting- 
place. 

“ Now,” he said, “ we shall neither of us catch cold, 
and we can bury ourselves in hay if we like until it 
has cleared up and we are dry again. Come and play 
at hay-making ! ” 

Beauty gave an exclamation of delight, and 
plumped down beside him. She seized handfuls of 
the loose hay and began to bury him, laughing like a 
child, and he lay still until nearly covered, and then 
sprang up as from an ambush and caught her in his 
arms. She shrieked in her excitement, and he hushed 
her quickly. 

“ Sh-sh-sh ! Some one might hear. People don’t 
leave bams with haylofts unlocked unless they are 
constantly coming and going themselves.” 

“ Well, it doesn’t matter if they do come ! t We are 
only sheltering from the rain.” 

“ It’s trespassing all the same,” he said rather con- 
fusedly. “ And if it were a passer-by who heard you 
they might slip in and steal the bicycles,” 

Beauty hushed her mirth without much heed to the 
illogical argument, and because he obviously; wished 


13,6 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

it. It was warm and dusky and sweet in the hayloft, 
and they lay down like two children and nestled into 
its rustling masses. It seemed so natural to turn to 
each other and kiss daintily, without more words, lying 
so close together; and then for the girl’s soft head to 
be pillowed on the man’s shoulder while he drew her 
closer — his plea mere broken whispers, the warmth 
of his caresses rousing in her at last some answering 
flame so that her lips clung to his breathlessly, and her 
whole young body leapt and burned, while the world 
reeled past in uncounted minutes or hours. — - 
.What followed seemed quite natural also. . . . 


CHAPTER VII 


«rvH, I’m getting fed up with this old show! I 
V-/ wish the whole bally thing would go to pot ! ” 
Our Fannie tossed the end of a stump of No. i grease- 
paint to Our Dollie, and proceeded to brush her neck 
and arms with a horrible concoction of whitening that 
peeled off in flakes and left its mark on dark coats — 
as Teddy Ryan had discovered. The breach be- 
tween Our Fannie and Our Dollie had been healed 
by the discovery of mutual faithlessness on the part 
of Mickey Burke, and they obliged each other 
with the tools of their profession as usual. Mickey, 
indeed, had been cast out of the whole Troupe as a 
traitor, and had betaken himself to a little girl in the 
acrobatic trio, which was regarded as such a “ come- 
down ” for him that all the girls were full of the sat- 
isfaction that sees vice punished. Yet to-night Our 
Fannie did not look pleased. 

“ What’s up ? ” said Our Kitty sharply. 

“ Oh, Panto’s a rotten job — it goes on too long 
and yet not long enough! You don’t get a decent 
run as you do in Musical Comedy, and yet it’s not like 
special weeks. Two months — or ten weeks — 
what’s that? Long enough to get stale, and not long 
enough to introduce new life into it. I hate every 
one about the eighth week ! ” 

“ The Crowd is too mixed ! ” said Our Kittie crit- 
137 , 


138 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

ically. “ I grant you that. What are all those 
Knockabouts doing cottoning on to Us? I’m sur- 
prised that the Managers don’t let them know their 
place ! ” 

“ Same here ! ” agreed Our Poppie from the table 
on which she was swinging her legs, for she was al- 
ways the quickest at making-up and ready first. 

“Well, the Knockabouts are cheery at any rate!” 
grumbled Our Fannie, slipping the towel from her 
shoulders and taking her dancing-dress from the 
Dresser. “ Every one else seems to have got the pip ! 
There’s Beauty Darling hasn’t spoken a word for days, 
and Our Nellie’s moping in concert.” 

“ Georgie-Porgie’s ill ! ” said Our Poppie signifi- 
cantly. “ He hasn’t been round for the last week.” 

“ Why ? ” — Kittie’s voice was sharper still. She 
was not in the same rooms as Our Poppie and Our 
Nellie, who shared with Beauty Darling, and had 
taken it for granted that young Mannering was going 
and coming as usual. 

“ Georgie caught a chill, cycling in the rain with 
Beauty last Friday,” said Our Poppie from the table. 
“ He’s had to go to bed-O, and take a nasty draught-O, 
and he can’t have his Beauty to nurse him — ” 

“ Oh, dry up ! ” said Kittie impatiently, but her deli- 
cate dark brows drew into a worried knit, and she be- 
gan to think and to draw conclusions that were dis- 
turbing. The outcome -of her cogitations was an 
apparently careless remark to Beauty Darling as they 
were changing into mufti that night in the dressing- 
room. Beauty had not, of course, been present when 
she was herself under discussion, her appearances on 
the stage being at different times to the Lilliput 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 139 

Troupe’s, but in the wild scramble to get rid of the 
paint and the Pantomime dresses she generally shared. 

“ Shall we walk home together ? ” Kittie said as she 
pinned her hat on. “ George isn’t coming for you, is 
he?” 

“ No,” said Beauty, with a pouting underlip. 
“ He’s laid up ; it’s a bad attack of rheumatism, and he 
thinks he’d better stay in bed.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Kittie, and forbore further comment. 
When they were walking home, however, having re- 
fused further escort, she asked how long George had 
been ill. 

“ Since Saturday,” said Beauty, with a promptness 
that betrayed how much it was in her thoughts. “ He 
came to the stage-door Saturday night, but he was 
shivering with a kind of chill then, and I begged him 
to go home.” 

“ He hasn’t been to see you since? ” 

“ No ; he went to bed on Sunday, and his people 
came down to nurse him.” 

Kittie whistled softly. “ No chance for you to go 
round to see him, then,” she said. 

“ I would have done, for half a damn — ” 

“ Perhaps it’s just as well you can’t,” Kittie cut in. 
“ George has been fooling round a lot, hasn’t he ? 
You don’t want to pull a long face like Our Fannie 
over Burke, when he doesn’t come again — ” 

“ He will come again — when he’s all right — ■” 

There was a pause. Then Our Kittie took her 
courage in her two hands and spoke out, as her pro- 
genitors had done in the slums of Drury Lane for 
several generations. It came naturally to Kittie to 
speak and spare not, and she did not hesitate for the 


140 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

scene she half expected, not recognizing that Beauty 
Darling was as incapable of paying her back in her 
own coin as of standing up to a fishwife in Billings- 
gate. Kittie would have faced the latter, uncon- 
sciously as to the manner born. 

“ Look here, Beauty,” she said. “ You’re going 
about like a silly fool over George Mannering, and 
you’d better give it up before anything worse hap- 
pens. He comes of people who wouldn’t welcome a 
girl who had been in the Panto, and ten to one he 
won’t come back when he gets all right again. You’d 
better let him go and not behave as if he ought to 
come, or there’ll be too much talk. I’d soon have it 
out of Our Fannie if she went on like you for any 
man ; I never let them get mad on any feller ! ” 

“ I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” said 
Beauty sulkily. “ I don’t want anyone interfering 
with George or me.” But she did not fly into the 
passion that Kittie expected, and there was a suspi- 
cion of tears in her voice. 

“ Well, I’ve warned you! ” said Kittie in the virtu- 
ous voice that people always assume when they know 
that the warning has been unwelcome. “ If you don’t 
chuck the whole business, you’ll be sorry. Give 
Georgie the go-by while you can — or leave him alone 
when he gets up again. I don’t believe his people will 
let him come back ! ” 

Beauty did not answer. Into her big blue eyes had 
come a look of fear — such fear as only ignorant fem- 
inine nature endures under certain conditions. The 
night was chilly, and she shivered a little even in 
Michael Phayre’s golf cloak. The two girls parted 
at Beauty’s door, and with a curt “ Good night ” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 141 

Beauty went in, leaving Our Kittie to go on to her 
own lodgings. 

Our Poppie was out to supper that night with two 
more of the Troupe and a kindly middle-aged couple 
(friends of Teddy Ryan’s) who saw no harm in, the 
little dancers and wished to give them “ a good time.” 
Kittie had not been invited, and Beauty did not know 
them. The lodgings were quite deserted and felt 
dark and cheerless as she went in, shivering again, for 
the fire was out. Beauty struck a match and lit the 
gas, but the room was so cold and depressing that she 
wished that she had remained in the dark or gone 
straight to bed. Yet being there she seemed to lack 
the initiative to make a move, and sat down forlornly 
in the arm-chair that had held so many couples, think- 
ing. . . . 

The terror came back to her eyes tenfold, and she 
sprang up suddenly and turned out the gas, creeping 
to her bed in the room beyond, where she threw her- 
self down, crying. Had there been anyone in the 
lodgings save her landlady she might have made a 
clean breast of her fears, and soothed herself with the 
actual statement. It was the indefinite terror of what 
might happen to her that was reducing her to an hys- 
terical outburst ; but there was no one to speak to, and 
by and by she threw off her clothes and sobbed herself 
to sleep. 

Beauty was pitifully ignorant, in spite of the things 
she saw and heard round her day by day. Immorality 
to her meant nothing but the fear of discovery — the 
necessity to keep the accomplished fact unacknowl- 
edged. But sometimes girls “ get caught,” and that 
was a disaster that must be spoken of in lowered 


142 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


voices. The dread of child birth was threefold — 
first the open shame and fear of unknown pangs ; then 
the loss of work when a girl began to lose her figure, 
and the permanent loss of it if she did not regain her 
shape properly; finally the burden of the child’s main- 
tenance. The man in these cases was a negligible 
quantity ; he was not likely to be of much use. No 
thought of appealing to George crossed her mind at 
the moment when fear dawned upon her, and later on 
it only came as a last resource. She cowered at the 
dread of the possible disaster before her, and began 
to firmly believe in it at the end of a week, without 
the slightest foundation for such a belief. 

If she could have seen George Manner ing and con- 
fided her fears to him, Beauty would soon have been 
comforted. For one thing George was chivalrous 
enough to have promised to marry her despite all dis- 
advantages of opposition from his family, did it really 
prove that she was going to have a child. But George 
had succumbed to the results of being wet through 
when they cycled together. He had forgotten all 
about time in the delirium of passion, and had lingered 
on in the hayloft with Beauty until he very nearly 
made her late for the theatre. He himself had gone 
home, but had turned up at the stage-door that night, 
as she had told Kittie, shivering with the first chill 
that foreboded fever; and though he had laughed at 
her fears, and had promised to take quinine and 
whisky as a preventive, he had been obliged to send 
her a pencilled note next day to say he was in bed and 
obliged to lie still owing to the pain in his limbs. The 
note had been almost as feverish as his pulse — an 
unbalanced mixture of devotion and despair that had 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 143 

at least flattered Beauty by its desire to get to her 
again. But George’s temperature went higher yet, 
and the doctors began to look grave. Instead of his 
coming to see her, she heard indirectly — through 
Teddy Ryan — that his mother and sister had come 
posthaste to Dublin to nurse him, and that he was 
down with rheumatic fever. Between her real feeling 
for George — and it was the first time that Beauty 
had experienced anything that could be dignified as 
love for any man — and her fear for him; her igno- 
rant dismay at what she had done and her fear for 
herself; above all the necessity not to admit her trou- 
ble — Beauty Darling was nearly at the end of her 
tether. It was aggravated by the resentment of Na- 
ture at having passions aroused that were no longer 
satisfied, and the instinct to repeat a series of emotions 
that ended in a new pleasure. If George had been 
able to continue their intimacy, it is certain that the 
relations between them would have continued for a 
time at least, and that Beauty’s mind would not have 
worked upon her body to their mutual disaster. As 
it was she became neurotic and morbid to the verge 
of hysteria, and to add to her trouble she had to face 
it alone. There was no one to whom she could ap- 
peal, the only letter she wrote being strangely enough 
to Michael Phayre. They had had an intermittent 
correspondence ever since Beauty went on tour, but 
she was never in haste either to receive or answer his 
letters, for it was a mental effort that she shirked. 
Half the time she would skip a sentence if there were 
no matter-of-fact detail upon which she could seize, 
and what she did read she rarely tried to understand. 
Her own letter, written in her dark days, was so much 


144 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

made up of ambiguity and contradictions when she 
thought she admitted too much, that Phayre did not 
take it very seriously. “ I have been a little fool — 
but not like other girls — I don’t mean that. I have 
grown too fond of somebody — but it doesn’t matter 
because circumstances have parted us. ... I wonder 
what you would say to me if I could have a good talk 
with you? I dare say you would laugh at me after 
all.” — Phayre thought that Beauty was beginning a 
sentimental phase in her adolescence that might not 
hurt her, and was rather glad that she should learn to 
feel, however elementary the education. He took his 
time to write back, waiting until he could feel in sym- 
pathy with her — and in the meantime Beauty faced 
despair. 

It was one Sunday night that she reached her 
climax. Sunday was always a day of slackened will- 
power and indulgence to those employed at the theatre, 
and the lack of discipline and work did not always 
mean an alternative of rest. The Lilliput Troupe 
had slept almost into the forenoon, and would only rise 
for the tea-party arranged for the afternoon on the 
lines of all their other tea-parties — Mickey Burke, 
Teddy Ryan, etc., and much stale tobacco and un- 
wholesome confectionery before the afternoon was 
over. But Beauty had risen earlier and had some 
breakfast and lunch together, spurred by the intoler- 
able restlessness that had overtaken her of late. She 
felt she could not face the chaff and laughter, or take 
her part in the usual repartee — “You’re another!” 
being its sprightly text. It was a dull day towards 
the end of February, but not very cold. George had 
been ill some weeks, and the strain of her trouble was 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 145 

telling on Beauty. Furthermore, the work at the 
theatre had been heavy, for the Pantomime was draw- 
ing to a close and its final weeks were to be a burst of 
splendour, new effects and pageants being introduced 
even at this late hour. Beauty’s face was almost as 
white as it had been in London, and sharpened with 
fretting. She had begun to think that such signs 
were the obvious ones of her coming maternity, and 
browsed upon all sorts of unclean fiction that she 
could obtain, describing the feelings of girls who had 
“ got caught ” and were several months gone in child- 
birth, without seeing the absurdity of the comparison. 
Certainly she knew that she had not lost her figure, 
but she was slight and small and childish. Some 
women did not show it very much, perhaps. Any- 
how, that would come later. 

On this February Sunday she decided to go for a 
walk by herself, driven by her own thoughts and the 
growing terror of her supposed condition. Her hands 
clasped and unclasped nervously as she made her way 
east of Sackville Street, and down towards the docks, 
and she was rapidly losing her self-control and reason- 
ing power together. 

The short day was rapidly growing dusk, and two 
sullen lines of red in the west represented sunset, like 
raw wounds in the sullen grey sky. She wandered 
aimlessly, now east, now west, but the river drew her 
like an uncanny spell, and the nearer she could get to 
it the more she stopped to look down into its cold, 
steady flow. For the first time the face of Nature 
meant something to Beauty Darling, and her eyes 
could see in her extremity. She thought that it was 
because it might be the last sight she would have of 

10 


146 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


earth, and it seemed to her that suddenly the world 
stood out in broad drawing and colouring, like a land- 
scape accentuated by fever. Indeed her brain was 
working at fever-heat, and her body seemed moving 
without her will through a delirium. One thing after 
another flashed into her mind — little scraps of con- 
versation between herself and other girls, bars of mu- 
sic in choruses she had almost forgotten. She re- 
membered an afternoon in Hyde Park with intense 
vividness, when Michael Phayre had tried to make her 
look at things with seeing eyes, and she had only been 
intent on other couples passing them — “ Do look at 
those small downy clouds, Beauty! A whole flock of 
them! Some cherub has certainly lost his wings.” — 
“Oh, how you do go on, Mr. Phayre! ” — Yet at the 
present instant she could see the two raw wounds in 
the sky, the menacing dark houses piled against it, the 
steady inward flow of the river that ran past the 
bridges, dragging her with it. . . . 

The end came very suddenly, and was an impulse 
like a flash of pain. She had hardly time to be sur- 
prised at herself, or frightened. She only knew that 
she must jump. . . . George was somewhere hidden 
in those cruel houses, and would not help her — and 
there was something even now forming in her, a new 
horrible birth that was Terror incarnate. Beauty did 
not know if she stifled the shriek that rose in her 
throat; she only knew that she made a leap and 
sprang. . . . 

When she looked up it was morning, or else so full 
of light that night seemed to have rolled into Eternity. 
There were faces round her, stern and anxious, and 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 147 

her body tingled with returning life. She did not 
remember what had happened, and when it was later 
on recalled to her memory that she had tried to com- 
mit suicide by jumping into the river, she stared with 
horrified eyes, and then burst into tears like a fright- 
ened child. One thing the plunge into cold water had 
done for her — it had cured her of the hysterical phase 
and left her with a firmer grip on life. 

Fortunately for her she was too ill to return to the 
theatre immediately. The long ward of the hospital, 
where she had been hastily taken to attempt resusci- 
tation of life, became the next scene that appeared on 
her tired brain, and she grew used to the flitting to and 
fro of uniformed nurses and hurried doctors, and to 
the beds stretching away from her filled with patient 
suffering. The nurses were brisk and cheerful; they 
treated her like a naughty child who must be kept 
aware of its fault, even while they looked after her 
bodily comfort. Beauty was subdued and depressed. 
She was really suffering from shock, and for a few 
days it did not matter to her that she was losing her 
place at the theatre and her means of livelihood. The 
Management had of course been informed, and the 
papers had had headlines — “ Attempted suicide of a 
chorus girl ! Miss Beauty Darling, well known in the 
Pantomime here ! ” It would reach London in time ; 
how the world would talk ! It did not matter, so long 
as they would let her lie. still in the long light ward, 
where the cold winter air blew so unceasingly night 
and day. As soon as she could answer questions she 
was, of course, put through a racking cross-examina- 
tion as to the reason of her attempt on her life; but 
Beauty’s dazed blue eyes held little or no intelligence 


148 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

for their questions. She had been unhappy and she 
thought she must have been ill. She remembered 
walking in the streets for a long time, and then came 
the impulse to jump into the river. She could say 
nothing more. When they told her in solemn tones 
how wicked she had been to try to end her life, she 
simply cried. The impulse had passed, and left her 
very thankful that she was still alive. 

It was no use to try to find her friends, or to return 
her to a mother who would protest “ that she could 
not keep her daughter in order ! ” — the usual theatri- 
cal excuse. Beauty had neither friends nor relations 
except those amongst the Pantomime people, and Kit- 
tie bore her out as to all the facts of the case when 
called upon to witness. She thought Beauty Darling 
had been unwell; the work had been very hard, and 
she had been singularly unlike herself. But, of 
course, Kittie had had no idea that she was hardly 
responsible for her own actions, or she would never 
have let her go out alone. Questioned as to any cause 
for Beauty’s mental state, Kitty did not know — she 
did not pry into other girls’ affairs ! Yes, there might 
be a man in the case. There had been a good many 
intimacies. Cross-examined, Kitty admitted that 
Beauty Darling had had a friend who was lying at 
death’s door with rheumatic fever, and might have 
worried over him — but the shrewdest of interro- 
gators may well be at a loss dealing with a girl of 
Kittie’s calibre who will not go back on a pal. There 
seemed nothing to do but dismiss Beauty Darling 
from the hospital with a severe caution, when she was 
well enough, and leave her to face her world again as 
best she might, as is the way with such flotsam. For- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 149 

tunately, the case had not got into the hands of the 
police, or she must have faced the police-courts. 

She could not go back to the theatre, for the Man- 
agement would not have her, though they put it upon 
the ground that they had engaged some one else to 
take her place, and that it was hardly necessary for 
Miss Darling to return for the short time the Panto- 
mime was then running. Beauty’s attempt to drown 
herself had not been at all a bad advertisement, but 
the Stage-Manager was a little afraid of the temper 
of the public if she were recognized. They might 
hiss her, or “ give her the bird,” as the saying is, 
which means a system of guying some particular artist 
from the cheaper portions of the house, and that not 
only entailed that Beauty’s appearances would raise 
a storm of ironical applause and mockery, but that all 
the scenes with which she was associated would be 
upset. It was too much of a risk, and Miss Darling 
received her salary for the two performances she had 
been in since last treasury, and also her notice. 

The most serious loss to her was the fare which 
she would have had to England by returning with the 
Company. She had saved a few pounds during the 
weeks of the run, though by no means the amount 
she had intended. Somehow living had not been so 
inexpensive, even sharing with her friends, and per- 
haps the natural childish instinct to spend, though 
only a few pence on sweets, had run away with the 
money. After all, Beauty was only seventeen, though 
she had learned in the hard school of neces- 
sity. Anyhow, the money so saved would only pay 
for a week or so’s living while she got over her con- 
valescence, or for the fare she had forfeited, if she 


150 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

returned to London at once. London was the inevi- 
table goal at which she aimed as instinctively as a 
homing pigeon. She knew hardly any other place, 
and it was the most likely centre in which she would 
find work. But her body was still weak from the 
chill and fever following on her immersion, and her 
mind was still weak from the worry and misery pre- 
ceding it. She dully resented it even when obliged to 
get up and help to wait on the other patients, more 
helpless than herself, while the idea of being dismissed 
from the hospital struck her with blank dismay. She 
had nowhere to go. Kittie and the rest of the Lilliput 
Troupe looked upon her a little askance, as she had 
felt when they came to see her in the ward. To 
Kittie’s shrewd, practical mind, Beauty had made a 
hopeless fool of herself all round, and was under the 
stigma of social disgrace whether she actually de- 
served it or not. They were all too good-natured to 
desert her in her extreme need, but there was no 
suggestion that she should come back to her old quar- 
ters with them, and she heard, casually, that Our 
Dollie had been glad to take her room as being nearer 
the theatre than where she was. The stage is start- 
lingly respectable at times, when it comes to actuali- 
ties, however lightly it may regard unproven facts. 

There was one visitor who appeared amongst the 
procession at Beauty’s bedside who did not belong to 
the Profession or to the hospital. At first he was a 
misty impression of a middle-aged man with grey hair 
and beard and a cheerful, rather humorous manner; 
but as her mind began to collect itself she heard and 
recognized that he was a doctor who had been the 
first man to render prompt assistance when she was 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 151 

picked up out of the river. It was he who had 
brought her to the hospital, though he was not con- 
nected with it, having a widespread poor practice of 
his own, and he took enough interest in the case to 
come several times to see how Beauty was going on, 
and to talk to her. When he heard that she was con- 
sidered fit to leave he asked her her plans, 

“ I don’t know,” said Beauty, almost sullenly. “ I 
suppose I shall go back to London, if I’ve enough 
money for the fare. Could you tell me what it will 
be?” 

“ You are hardly fit for a long journey all by your- 
self, at once,” he said quietly, but his kindly eyes dwelt 
a little sadly on the girl’s small white face and droop- 
ing figure. Some of the brightness and curl seemed 
to have gone out of her hair, which was still allowed 
to fall over her shoulders schoolgirl fashion, and her 
blue eyes were so large and dark in contrast to her 
lack of colour that they looked tragic. She was still 
pretty, for the shape of her face and the small features 
defied criticism, and there is no getting over blue eyes 
and red lips and gold-brown hair, but her prettiness 
was a little pathetic. 

“ Can’t you do something else for a living for a 
time, until you are fit to go back to the stage? It is 
such a hard life! ” said the doctor gently. 

Beauty shook her head. She knew of no market 
wherein she had wares to sell save the stage, or as an 
artist’s model, and with a strange tenacity she would 
rather have risked starvation than posed again, even 
if she had known where to apply. 

“ Can you sew? ” said the doctor suddenly. 

“ Yes,” said Beauty, rather surprised. “ Perhaps 


152 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

I could get some embroidery to do? ” she added, with- 
out enthusiasm, however. It was badly paid work, as 
she knew, and long dull hours of application. “ I 
have often been told I work well enough for the 
shops.” 

“ I don’t want embroidery,” said the doctor with 
his quizzical smile. " But I do want some sewing 
done. I live with my sister — we are both unmarried, 
elderly people, and her eyesight is failing her very 
much. She complains that the household linen needs 
much mending, and is getting into arrears. I will 
take you into my house as a little sewing-maid for a 
week or so if you like to come, until you are able to 
travel. Then you can save what money you have in 
hand, and you will not have to keep yourself while in 
my house. I shall only be able to pay you what I 
should a woman who does such work professionally, 
however. What do you think about it?” 

Beauty twisted one of her soft loose curls round 
her finger in a way she did when perplexed, and looked 
at her Good Samaritan with her great tragic eyes. 
The hint of tragedy in her face, which lay chiefly in 
the formation of the brows and the unsmiling lips, 
was much accentuated since her illness. She did not 
like the idea at all — it sounded very derogatory from 
her standpoint, which was that she was a young lady 
with a “ profession,” and not by any means a work- 
ing girl. The ludicrous vanity of this standard as ap- 
plied to a certain type of chorus girl — slipshod in her 
speech, often careless to uncleanliness in her habits, 
foul in her mind, and loose in her morals — could 
only have been exemplified by an indignant shop-as- 
sistant or a decent young woman in domestic service. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 153 

But there are, of course, all classes in the ranks of the 
chorus as well as behind the counters of shops or in 
domestic service, and it was the habit of ranking her- 
self with girls who were obviously of a much higher 
grade that caused Beauty Darling to think the position 
offered to her was a “ come-down.” Had she been a 
girl of a type that forces respect and admiration for 
those who work their way up from the lower ranks 
to an established position on the stage, she would not 
have hesitated. The honest chance to earn her bread 
and restore her shaken mind and body would have 
been recognized at once, and she would have seen it 
as a means to the end of getting back to her original 
work and improving her position — the real purpose 
that seizes every means whereby to rise. But poor 
Beauty, really only fitted for the post of sewing-maid 
for anything she had done so far, hesitated, with a 
pouting underlip, and at last accepted the offer made 
to her through sheer necessity. 

“ Then that's settled,” said the doctor cheerfully, 
as he rose to go. “ I shall tell the matron that you are 
coming to me — you leave on Tuesday, don't you? 
And I shall tell my sister that I have found her a little 
sewing-maid.” (Beauty winced.) “ My name is 
Dr. Hardinge, and I will leave you my address.” 

Beauty did not see him again until she presented 
herself at his house and asked for Miss Hardinge. 
She had come in a cab, because she had to bring her 
big theatre basket and smaller luggage, and was not 
even yet very fit to walk. The house was a quiet 
one, in an unfashionable neighbourhood, but though 
shabby it was all the same of a higher stamp than any 
in which Beauty had ever lived, for it was the home 


154 THE career of beauty darling 

of gentlepeople, and unlike either Mrs. Darling’s cot- 
tage or the series of theatrical rooms in which she had 
passed her existence ever since she left Wandlebridge, 
not excepting the little flat at Maida Vale, where the 
breadcrumbs and dust so frequently gathered under 
the table and it was nobody’s business to clean or keep 
order. The servant who admitted her left her stand- 
ing in the hall while she went to tell her mistress, and 
Beauty felt the first sense of satisfaction that had 
come to her over her new engagement at the unknown 
atmosphere of home-life and cleanliness round her. 
It was a very busy household, and the hall was not 
even very tidy — there was none of that spick and 
span paint and new fittings that beset some houses in 
the middle class and to which some even of Beauty’s 
school- fellows had been born. But it carried the per- 
sonality of two cultured, wide-minded people — gen- 
tlefolk both of them, though their means were small. 

Miss Hardinge came out of a room on the right a 
moment later, settling her glasses on her nose and 
peering at the new importation with near-sighted eyes. 
She was a spare elderly woman with a great likeness 
to her brother, and it must be owned that she regarded 
Beauty with some dismay, though her greeting was as 
civil as if to one of her own acquaintances. 

“ Oh, you are the young girl of whom Dr. Hard- 
inge spoke to me ? ” she said, her eyes wandering 
from Beauty’s fur cap, inevitably at the back of her 
head, to her unconfined hair and the soiled silk blouse, 
collarless and trimmed with much lace, which was visi- 
ble under the historic golf-cape. “ I understand that 
you are going to undertake the mending that has ac- 
cumulated since my eyes were weak? ” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 155 

“ Yes,” said Beauty lamely. Her assurance seemed 
to have been left behind at the theatre, and though she 
did not say “ ma’am,” she felt a dependent. 

“ You have been ill, I understand. You don’t look 
very strong.” 

“ I have been in the hospital,” said Beauty with a 
moment’s hesitation. She did not know how much 
Miss Hardinge might have heard about her, and a 
painful flush of red blood surged up over her face, 
making her look still more like a bashful child. 

Miss Hardinge’s expression softened, and for the 
first time a slight smile crossed her face. “ There is 
a great deal of mending to do,” she said dryly. “ Do 
you think you can undertake it ? ” 

“ I will do my best ! ” said poor Beauty, feeling the 
humiliation of her position as keenly as physical 
pain. 

“ Well, you had better have some lunch now, and 
later on I will set you to work,” said Miss Hardinge 
briskly. “ Emma, Miss Darling will have her meals 
in my workroom, and then she will be able to keep all 
her things together.” 

The explanation was vague, but the fact was that 
the doctor and his sister had decided that it would be 
wiser to keep Beauty away from intimate association 
with the servants, who looked down on her already as 
much as she did on them. Master to their minds was 
a “crank,” and this was one of his charities; but the 
servants loved the doctor, and so they made no trouble 
over Beauty’s presence in the house, or even carrying 
her meals to the little workroom. They had gathered 
the threads of the story together, of course, and knew 
who she was, having read it in the newspapers ; but they 


156 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

only left her severely alone, and expressed unmitigated 
opinions of her in the kitchen. 

Beauty herself was relieved to be so let alone, and 
accepted her meals apart as a recognition of her su- 
periority to the servants — the real reason did not oc- 
cur to her. It was a very subdued edition of Beauty 
Darling who sewed and mended Dr. Hardinge’s house- 
hold linen, and even her appearance was much toned 
down, not only because she had been ill, but because 
Miss Hardinge had quietly insisted on her wearing 
different clothes. 

“ I must ask you to wear a dark gown — either 
black or dark blue — while you are at work here,” she 
said in a take-it- for-granted fashion that Beauty found 
it impossible to combat. “No doubt your blouses and 
skirts are very suited for stage life, but I think you 
will see that they are not appropriate in Dr. Hard- 
inge’s household. That silk is too thin for this cold 
weather too,” she added, with a disapproving glance 
at the much-washed garment that had originally come 
to Beauty through the Guild and been embellished by 
her with cheap lace and a cut-down collar. “ And as 
you still wear your hair down I should be obliged if 
you would tie it back ! ” she added dryly. — 

“ I really couldn’t have her looking like a girl from 
a railway refreshment-room or a booth in a fair ! ” she 
said in a spasm of impatience to her brother. “ I 
didn’t like her leaving the house or being seen to enter 
it when I sent her on errands.” 

But the doctor only laughed. “ I expect she burst 
into angry tears, eh? ” he said, with his eyes twinkling. 
“ Be patient with her, Madge — she is still very run 
down and suffering from arrears of hard work and 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 157 

bad food, and she has been taught to think that vulgar 
exaggeration makes her prettier.” 

“ She didn’t cry, as a matter of fact,” Miss Hard- 
inge admitted. “ She took it very quietly — a little 
sullenly perhaps. I have bought her a ready-made 
black serge skirt, and cut out and fitted the bodice for 
her, and she has made it herself. She is a clever little 
puss with her needle! If only she would look after 
herself and dress neatly she would look like a lady, 
but she can’t see that, of course ! ” 

“ I haven’t caught sight of her for a day or two,” 
said the doctor, laughing. “ Is the change startling? ” 

“ It’s a great improvement anyhow, and I tell you 
what, Jim, it has made even the servants much more 
civil in their manner to her. You know how clever 
servants are in noticing these things. She has tied 
her hair back with a big bow (I wish it had been 
smaller, but one can’t have everything). And she 
looks reasonably warm and almost refined in a decent 
frock that doesn’t show half a yard of soiled neck and 
those awful beads ! ” 

The doctor laughed outright and heartily. “ Don’t 
let your horror run away with you, Madge ! She was 
a very clean child — ” 

“ I can’t help it. Those girls who will wear low 
gowns and short sleeves always look soiled in day- 
light, if they would only see it.” 

“ She is a very pretty child in spite of everything 
• — low necks and strings of beads and too much 
hair ! ” 

“ Yes, she is,” Miss Hardinge agreed cordially. 
She was as kindly as her brother and as ready to 
praise generously where she found any cause. “ But 


158 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

I am afraid, poor child, it must be anything but a 
blessing to her. I suppose you never really discovered 
what was the cause of her throwing herself into the 
river? ” 

“ The obvious solution would be to say there must 
be a young man who had treated her badly, but I really 
believe it was as much hysteria as anything. I never 
asked for her confidence.” 

“ But the hysteria must have had a cause, and the 
young man may have come first,” said Miss Hardinge, 
knitting her brows. “ I think there is something on 
her mind still, but I have not attempted to question 
her.” 

“Do you?” said the doctor more gravely. “I 
thought it was merely due to the shock and her illness 
and the depression of finding that she was out of 
work — quite enough to sober any girl ! But if there 
is more, as you say, I ought to find out. I think I will 
have a little talk to Miss Beauty Darling one of these 
days.” 

He did not often encounter his protegee, unless 
he met her in the hall going in or out on some errand 
for Miss Hardinge, who took care that she should 
have both air and exercise. The doctor and his sister 
might easily have been taken in by this girl they had 
allowed into their house without a character — with, 
if anything, a rather bad one; but they were gener- 
ally justified in their judgment, and Miss Hardinge 
not only let the girl go out alone, but trusted her with 
money for small commissions. They took it for 
granted that Beauty Darling was honest, and she would 
have been ashamed to rob them, even though she might 
have been tempted to do so from her outlook on a 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 159 

father desperate future. Mrs. Darling’s early train- 
ing had made her honest, however, and she had al- 
ways looked askance on the petty pilferings that some- 
times came to light in the theatre. The doctor had 
only made one inquiry about her, and that had been 
to the Manager of the theatre where the Pantomime 
was running, but the answer had been quite satisfac- 
tory. “ I believe Darling to be a perfectly honest girl 
and, so far as I know, respectable,” this person had 
said offhandedly. “ She has probably got into trouble 
through ignorance — that’s the only explanation I can 
give you of the damned folly. But you’ll understand 
I can’t have her back while it’s still fresh in the minds 
of the public. Later on she should have no difficulty in 
getting engagements.” 

Dr. Hardinge was thinking of all this when he 
looked into his sister’s workroom one afternoon and 
saw Beauty Darling sitting by the window to catch 
the fading light before the lamp was lit. She was 
working swiftly and mechanically, and the face bent 
over an old sheet that she was patching was so dreamy 
as to betray the fact that her thoughts were very far 
away. Dr. Hardinge stood and looked at her for 
a moment with his keen, kindly eyes and noted the 
picture that she made; her delicate little profile outlined 
against the pale sky and the last glint of sunset catch- 
ing the lights in the mass of curls that were so de- 
cently tied back nowadays. The line of the brows 
and the drooping lids was rarely lovely from an ar- 
tistic point of view, and he marvelled a little that 
Nature should have made up a face so flawless and 
then painted it to perfection. As a rule, there is some 
defect to balance a preponderance of good looks, but 


160 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


Dr. Hardinge really did not see where to find a fault 
in the girl’s motionless head bent over her work. She 
had not heard him enter and never moved nor became 
conscious of his scrutiny. Then he coughed, and 
Beauty pricked her finger. 

“ I beg your pardon, doctor, I did not see you. Can 
I get anything for you ? ” she said as she looked up 
with a start. 

“ I looked in to see how you were getting on,” he 
said with a directness that gave her no chance to feel 
uneasy. “ I have hardly seen anything of you since 
you came here. Are you feeling quite strong 
again ? ” 

“Yes, thank you,” said Beauty, sucking her finger 
to prevent a stain on the sheet. 

“ In mind as well as body ? ” 

She looked up beneath the deep fringe of her lashes 
with her blue eyes darkening. Her face said, “ What 
do you mean?” though her lips still sucked the 
wounded finger in silence, and he answered it : 

“ Less at war with the world than before you found 
yourself in hospital, I mean.” 

She looked down at the sheet, fallen heedlessly on 
her knee, and a half stealthy look came over her face, 
as if she were feeling out for the mood in which she 
had attempted to take her own life. “ I don’t know ! ” 
she said simply. 

“ Would you like to tell me why you did it, child ? 
Perhaps I could help to smooth the trouble.” 

Pie expected her to hesitate, and to have to help her 
with questions, until she admitted there having been a 
man in the case and confessed to some pitiable folly — 
he did not think it would be worse. But her answer, 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 161 


when it did come, gave him such a shock that he nearly 
betrayed himself with an exclamation. 

“ I thought I was going to have a baby ! ” 

“ But, my dear child,” he said gravely after a minute, 
mastering his surprise, “ had you any reason for think- 
ing so ? Now, don’t cry — I am not scolding you. I 
want to get to the root of this.” 

“ We were very fond of each other,” — said Beauty 
between little sobbing breaths, and with no further 
introduction of the male element, “ and I let him make 
a fool of me! ” 

“ How long ago was this ? ” asked Dr. Hardinge 
quietly. 

“ About three weeks — oh, nearly a month now ! 
He got a chill that day, and he’s been very ill nearly 
ever since. I’ve never seen him except that night 
after, when he brought me home from the theatre, 
and his people are nursing him and I know they will 
take him away and never let him see me ! ” 

Her confused speech told the doctor one thing at 
least — it had been a single slip, and not a continuance 
of immoral relations between them. He went on with 
his catechism, and in a very short while was certain 
that there was no chance of the girl having a child, 
and never had been. Her attempt on her own life 
had been the result of hysteria and sheer ignorance, 
and the wonder was that she should have been so un- 
balanced through mere imagination. But he recog- 
nized that George Mannering’s illness had seemed 
rather like the vengeance of Providence, and that 
Beauty, left alone, had become panic-stricken. He re- 
assured her as to her risk of becoming a mother, and 
took the opportunity to put her folly in a plain matter- 


1 62 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


of-fact fashion before her, neither lecturing nor 
preaching, but speaking to her almost as if she had 
been a boy instead of a girl. Beauty listened with her 
eyes cast down, but it was obvious that she was neither 
overawed nor resentful, because she gradually told 
him more of her real history than she had ever con- 
fided to anyone since she ran away from home. He 
listened without any undue pity or horror to the list of 
her revelations, and gave her good sound advice at the 
end ; but when he confided again in his sister he rubbed 
his grey hair up on end with something that was al- 
most despair. 

“ The foundling daughter of a working woman — 
probably the offspring of vice or ungoverned impulse in 
the first place,” he said. “ Seduced, or rather violated, 
when she was only fourteen by some blackguard of 
a man lodging at their cottage — then a lurid experi- 
ence on the stage. What chance is there for the 
Beauty Darlings of this world? Her face is a curse 
to her.” 

“ And now this affair with the young man — did you 
hear his name ? ” 

“ Yes, and I know his people — big wholesale linen 
people in Belfast. The boy is being made a doctor, 
and they are intensely respectable and middle-class. 
As Beauty says, they will certainly never let him see 
her again if they can help it, once they find out.” 

“ Has she attempted to see him ? ” 

“ She wrote once to his address, if not twice, but of 
course she has never had an answer. I know myself, 
by chance, that he has really been at death’s door, and 
it will be weeks before he is about again, and then he 
will go away for his convalescence. Besides, Madge, 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 163 

I really do not know that we have any right to try to 
renew the connexion between him and Beauty Darling 
if we could.” 

“ Not for his sake — but hers ! ” 

“ He has not done her much harm, as it chances, ex- 
cept that, indirectly, he has lost her her place at the 
theatre. But that was really due to her utter igno- 
rance and losing her head. If there were a child on 
the way perhaps we should be justified in bringing 
him to book. But as things are I don’t know that he 
deserves to sink all his prospects in such an elementary 
venture as poor Beauty. Just think — if you or I had 
a boy should we not move heaven and earth to save 
him from such a marriage ? ” 

“ Y-yes — but he has a share of responsibility in 
the matter! The girl doesn’t seem naturally a bad 
girl.” 

“ Good Lord, no! poor little scrap. She seems to 
have fought like a little tigress for the liberty to go 
straight up to now, after that first man wronged her. 
He’s the brute I should like to scrag! ” 

“ My dear John, you really are like a schoolboy 
yourself when you get worked up!” said Miss Hard- 
inge calmly. “ Well, it’s a pitiful affair altogether.” 

“ It has the elements of hope in it to the catholic 
mind. The boy and girl do really seem to have fallen 
into Nature’s trap through being fond of each other, 
and that, to an old heathen like myself, is better than 
if the girl had married one of these elderly satyrs for 
money and given him a chance to debauch her body 
and soul! The thing is, what are we to do for Miss 
Beauty Darling in the future? Have you spoken to 
her about embroidery ? ” 


1 64 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“Yes, but she says with truth, unfortunately, that 
even if she could get the work it is so badly paid that 
she would hardly be able to make a living. And as she 
has had two or three years' training on the stage it 
is better to do the thing she has learned. You know, 
I think," added Miss Hardinge honestly, “ that she 
misses the young companionship, let alone the excite- 
ment of the life. Since her mind and body have re- 
covered she has begun to feel it very dull here — she 
does not talk to the servants, and you and I can hardly 
be called society for her." 

“ It seems inevitable that she should go back to the 
stage," said the doctor, knitting his brows. “ The 
only thing we can do for her is to get some sort of 
standard into her empty head, and rouse her ambition 
to rise in her profession. If she could get into a bet- 
ter set in the theatrical world she would take their 
tone at once, and unconsciously imitate them. There’s 
an extraordinary difference in her since she came here 
even." 

“ She is not naturally a girl with low or vicious 
tastes," said Miss Hardinge shrewdly. “ She is just 
too pliable, that is all. If she were a little child I 
should say it was one case in a thousand for adoption. 
She could be developed into anything anyone liked. 
But her chance has gone by." 

“ She was adopted — by the wrong class ! " said the 
doctor dryly. “ Well, we shall not be able to keep her 
here much longer, I foresee. I must go into accounts 
with Miss Beauty Darling, and see how much money 
she has. We must at least try to start her fair in 
London." 

Beauty had as a fact four pounds and a few odd 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 165 

shillings. She had calculated that she would save ten 
at least, at the beginning of the tour, but what with 
the unpaid weeks of rehearsal and her natural care- 
lessness about money the salary had not come up to 
her expectations. It was a wonder that she had saved 
so much. Dr. Hardinge told her that her fare to Lon- 
don would cost her about thirty shillings, and there 
was a pound owing to her for all the mending she 
had done, which really amounted to some weeks’ work. 
Added to this, he and his sister were making her a little 
present which would leave her with about seven pounds 
in hand, in case she found a difficulty in getting work. 
Then he asked her where she was going on her arrival 
in London. 

Beauty did not know, and she had not any ad- 
dresses to write to, except the one in Peckham, where 
she had lived with Mrs. Summers. Furthermore, 
she shrank from asking any of the Pantomime people 
to look for rooms for her, for she still felt the slight 
of her ostracism from them. Folly Bird or Mona 
Morley might get her a room if she wrote to them, 
unless they were on tour ; but with some hesitation she 
said that she thought she had a friend who was more 
to be depended upon than they, and would not only 
make sure of a room, but meet her at Euston. 

Who was this friend ? 

Michael Phayre. 

Dr. Hardinge had not yet heard Phayre’s name, and 
his sex was against him, but after an account of the 
acquaintance between him and Beauty, he wrote to 
Phayre himself, and received an answer that seemed 
to satisfy him. 

“ I really believe that Beauty has made one friend 


1 66 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


who is genuine, and who will do her good rather than 
harm,” he confided to his sister. “ From all she tells 
me, the man has never made love to her — never 
started any such relationship between them — and she 
admits he talks in such a fashion that she hardly under- 
stands him.” 

“ Well, that’s in his favour, anyway ! ” said Miss 
Hardinge, with unconscious irony. 

The doctor laughed outright. “ I like his letters 
myself (we are having quite a correspondence), and 
he has promised to look after the girl as far as lies in 
his power. I quite realize that poor Beauty would 
not understand Phayre — he speaks another lan- 
guage.” 

“ Will he meet her and get her a. respectable lodg- 
ing? — that is more to the point,” said Miss Hardinge 
practically. 

“ Yes, he has promised to do that. And for the rest 
we must trust to the Travellers’ Aid.” 

Neither the doctor nor his sister had the least inten- 
tion of allowing Beauty to travel by herself and fall 
into the snare of making acquaintances on the way. 
For as long as they had her in their charge they 
shielded her as carefully as a girl of their own class, 
and threw out their protection as far as it would go 
on the way to London. There exists, for the safe- 
guarding of ignorance and decency, a society called 
the Travellers’ Aid, who for a minimum sum — I 
think it is eightpence an hour for the worker’s time — 
will meet young women at stations and see them de- 
spatched into the right train, another worker meeting 
them again at their destination if desired. The sys- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 167 

tem forms a sort of chain, so that a girl starting from 
Dublin, as Beauty did, can be taken charge of until 
she is actually on the steamer, met at Holyhead, and 
put into the right train for London, and met yet again 
in London if necessary. The Society will even ar- 
range, at the client’s expense, to send some reliable 
person to travel with the girl all the way ; but this Dr. 
Hardinge was not justified in affording, and did not 
think necessary. Michael Phayre would meet Beauty 
at Euston, and had promised to write of her safe 
arrival; between that and Dublin the Travellers’ 
Aid would work their chain, and she would be care- 
fully handed from one to another, with small chance 
of her going astray. The doctor had come into con- 
tact with the Society in his professional capacity, and 
trusted its methods. 

So Beauty was sent home, as carefully as a parcel 
labelled “ This side up with care.” She thought the 
supervision rather a bore and was inclined to resent 
the paper — an official form — by which she was iden- 
tified at each stage of the journey. But when she had 
been met and taken charge of by two or three worried 
but courteous ladies, who found her luggage and saw 
that she caught the right boat or train and was fed 
into the bargain, she began to like it. It was like hav- 
ing a maid or a courier to work for her, and Beauty, 
essentially idle, smiled with dewy blue eyes upon her 
chaperons and accepted all their ministrations with 
characteristic selfishness — it was easy and comforta- 
ble to stand still looking like a pretty, helpless child, 
and say, “ Yes, I am to take the train for Euston, 
please. No, I don’t know where it is. Dr. Hard- 


1 68 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


in ge said he would arrange for some one to show 
me.” Owing to this system of supervision, and her 
being sea-sick on the boat, she had no adventures upon 
her journey, and arrived at Euston in the dusk of a 
March evening, with the dear sights and smells in 
her eyes and nose and the familiar roar coming up 
through every sense, and making her heart beat with 
a new sense of joy, for Beauty was a born Cockney. 
She had let down the window of the carriage, and 
leaned out to see the porters looking out for their 
“job,” and running along by the still moving car- 
riages, the rows of cabs, horse and motor, the passen- 
gers waiting for other trains by other platforms ; and, 
as they moved slowly in, Michael Phayre’s worn face 
seemed lifted towards her out of the crowd waiting 
for the Dublin train. The shabby, familiar aspect 
of the man gave her the one touch of home-coming 
she had lacked, and her eyes filled with sudden tears 
as she almost fell out of the train and ran towards 
him. 

“ Oh, Mr. Phayre ! ” she said, clinging to his arm 
with both hands. “ This is ripping! Did Dr. Hard- 
inge write to you? I expected the Traveller’s Aid 
people again — and I’ve lots of things in the car- 
riage — shall I get a porter ? Oh, I am glad to be — 
back!” 

“ Say you’re glad to be home, Beauty,” said Michael 
quietly. “ I am glad to see you again, childie ; I’ve 
been worried over you. I should like you to feel that 
it is coming home ! ” 

And as he turned, himself, to get her smaller pack- 
ages, and arrange for the collection of her luggage, 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 169 

and Beauty watched him, she drew a long breath' of 
relief. Somehow for the first time for two or three 
months she felt quite safe. 


CHAPTER VIII 


M ICHAEL PHAYRE had found a room for 
Beauty in New Cross, near to his own. It 
seemed to her oddly familiar to be back in the midst 
of the ringing, rolling tramcars, the cheap shops with 
their wares upon the pavements, and the smell of the 
streets in South London. I am inclined to think that 
each district of the Metropolis has its own especial 
flavour, even the West End. The City is faintly 
reminiscent of too much humanity, go where one will. 
It overreaches the petrol fumes and the disinfectants 
squirted in the roadway, and at all street corners, even 
in the shops, it meets you with the staleness of Mr. 
Kipling’s “ thrice-breathed airs.” The North side is 
frankly nasty, and takes its tone from old clothes and 
second-hand furniture, but the South is chiefly vege- 
tables. Whether the poorer classes live on cabbage 
on the South side, or throw their refuse in the gutter 
till such time as the dust-cart comes round, I have never 
been able to decide. There are a goodly quantity of 
hawkers’ barrows certainly, but this will not entirely 
account for the over-boiled market-garden stench that 
stalks triumphant through the streets when the wind 
is quiet. 

Beauty had learned the value of those hawkers’ 
barrows when she lived in Peckham before, and the 
wisdom of buying from them at a penny cheaper than 
the shops, especially after dusk. When she lived with 
170 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING iyt 

Mrs. Summers she had frequently done the marketing, 
and done it thriftily; but now that she was “on her 
own” the thrift became skilled labour; for she was 
“ out,” in theatrical parlance, and the dread meaning 
of the word was beginning to dawn upon her. It had 
seemed very easy to get work either at Allonby’s or 
the Satyr, or even the Sovereignty (a notoriously badly 
paid house), or through one of the Agents, when she 
left Dublin, but it was a different story in London. 
Allonby’s and the Satyr were in the full swing of 
popular productions, and their casts were full. There 
did not seem to be any tours going out, and even the 
Agents shrugged their shoulders and said there was 
“ nothing doing.” Beauty learned what it feels like 
to wait hour after hour without food in that outer 
room beyond the Agent’s office, where there are not 
enough chairs, and every one is afraid to go out and 
get something to eat lest they should miss their chance 
of seeing him. In her first experience of Bent and 
Bent she had gone with Kittie Smart, secure in the 
advantage of her already settled engagement; but 
Beauty found that when she was on her own merits 
it was not easy to pass the closed door. She had also 
to bear the patronage of the office-boy, and not flinch 
when his unwholesome face was thrust close to her 
own, or his familiar hand rested on her shoulder. 
There would be no chance of seeing his master if she 
did not endure it and she had to stand amongst the 
scarecrows of men and women whose faces and 
dresses, like a distorted likeness of her own, made her 
shudder. Should she ever come to this, when her 
prettiness was gone and she was no longer of any use 
even to kick up a naughty skirt and make eyes at the 


172 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

gallery? That woman with the painted face must 
once have been pretty, though now the red and white 
were so much a mask to hide wrinkles that the original 
was almost lost. Their clothes, too, mostly soiled 
finery, were a mocking imitation of the smart chorus 
girl in her prosperous days. Now and then a man or 
woman of a better class, more decently dressed, would 
appear quietly amongst the rag, tag, and bobtail; but 
their eyes, if they chanced to meet Beauty’s, seemed 
to hold a reflection of the despair in her own. They 
also were “ out,” and their experience taught them 
the grim tragedy staring them in the face as week 
after week passed and showed them no hope of work. 

Perhaps her late association with Dr. Hardinge and 
his sister, and the quiet orderliness of their home, 
made the theatrical world more sordid to Beauty’s 
eyes, for with her usual impressionableness she was 
yet under the influence of her late environment. Her 
hair was still tied away from her face, and she still 
wore the dark, plain clothes that made her look “ al- 
most like a lady.” Possibly this appearance rather 
went against her in her application for work in Musical 
Comedy; she looked so quiet and well bred that in 
the Agent’s language she would have been summed 
up as Legitimate Drama or Comedy, or one of the 
Shakespeare people, seeing her in the waiting-room. 
Even the lodging which Michael Phayre had found 
her dissatisfied her by its shabby ugliness, after the 
atmosphere of home in Dr. Hardinge’s house. It was 
a combined room, with a bed in a distant corner, and 
a dusty curtain to draw over the dressing-table and 
washhandstand. The other portion of the apartment 
was furnished with a rickety sofa and chairs of an un- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 173 

speakable dinginess, and a centre table that always 
had an artificial indiarubber plant in a pot on it when 
Beauty’s meals were not in evidence. She hated that 
plant. It reminded her somehow of Mrs. Darling’s 
wonderful aspidistra. When Michael Phayre came 
in one afternoon to see how she was getting on, he 
found her pulling the forlorn furniture about and 
thrusting it into fresh positions without consulting her 
landlady. 

“ What are you doing, Beauty ? ” he asked with a 
humorous twinkle in his eyes. “ It looks like a spring- 
cleaning ! ” 

“ I wish it were! ” said Beauty disdainfully, wrink- 
ling up her nose. “ The whole place is choking with 
dust the minute you try to move anything.” 

“ Well, what are you trying to do, then? ” 

“ It is all so ugly ! ” said the girl, standing in the 
middle of the disarranged table and chairs with a 
pouting underlip. “ I thought if I pushed the table 
into the window and moved the sofa round to the 
fireplace it wouldn’t look quite so beastly. But it’s no 
use.” 

Michael’s eyes had a sudden brightness, like a flash 
of comprehension, as they rested on her. He had 
been to see Beauty once or twice when she was sharing 
rooms with other girls, and he had found the do- 
mestic administration of those households quite as 
slatternly as Beauty’s present quarters, but Beauty had 
never complained. 

“ Have you tried to dust or scrub the room at all ? ” 
he said. “ It would be much better if we started 
clean before we fried to improve it. Look here, I’m 
an old hand at scrubbing and cleaning. Let’s ask your 


174 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

landlady for a pail of water and a broom, and have a 
turn out. I'll do the scrubbing if you’ll dust.” 

“ I don’t think she’ll let us,” said Beauty dubiously. 
She wanted the room to feel more like Miss Hard- 
inge’s, but the hard work did not appeal to her. 

Michael, however, was firm on that point. He for- 
aged over the house until he found a dirty maid-of- 
all-work (the landlady was out or he might have met 
with more opposition), and robbed her of a broom 
and a pail and some old rags that did duty for dusters. 
Then he took off his coat and threw open the window, 
subjecting the frowzy room to a more thorough turn- 
ing-out than it probably had had for years. He could 
not take up the carpet, but he scrubbed all round it, 
and with the furniture mostly in the passage he cleared 
its surface of accumulated dust; while Beauty, spurred 
to emulation, dusted and rubbed and cleaned until even 
the greasy walls felt better to touch. In the course 
of their vigorous onslaught Michael found that the 
covering of the sofa was only tied on for the sake of 
modernity, and underneath was a faded but rather har- 
monious woollen rep. 

“ Look here, Beauty ! Here’s a find ! ” he said 
cheerfully. “ We’ll take this beastly cover off, and 
if you keep this old thing brushed you’ll find it will 
look quite respectable. Are the chairs the same? 
Yes, thank Heaven! Now there’s only that table- 
cover and the mantelpiece.” 

The mantel-border — that touch of gentility that 
lurks in the dreariest apartments ! — was so toned with 
dirt and dust that it had reached a uniform drabness, 
and was finished with a cheap ball fringe that made 
Beauty shiver to touch. Michael came and looked at 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 175 

it with his hands in his lean pockets. Then he re- 
moved two sixpenny-halfpenny vases and a cheap 
clock that did not go, and put them gingerly on the 
table before he took hold of the board on which the 
thing was mounted with both hands and gently rocked 
it. It had always been unsteady, and after one dex- 
terous twist it came away without any further trouble, 
revealing an inoffensive shelf of painted wood be- 
neath. 

“ That will wash at least,” said Michael coolly, de- 
positing the discarded drapery in a distant corner. 
“ If we are asked, Beauty, we will say that it broke 
down under our energy in brushing. But I don’t 
think we need trouble Mrs. Perkins about it at all. 
Now if you put your Beasts out here, and I try to 
mend that clock, you will be quite cheerful.” 

The “ Beasts ” referred to were a collection of toy 
animals that she had gathered together while at Al- 
lonby’s. All the girls had toys or knicknacks of some 
sort, given them by some one about the theatre or pri- 
vate friends, and kept there for luck. Beauty did not 
confine herself to any one animal, and “ Beauty and 
her Beasts ” was to become a byword by-and-by. 

Her eyes brightened. She had not had the heart 
to bring out this collection of china animals since 
she left the theatre, but they had now become quite a 
formidable array, and would fill the shelf. 

“ What are you going to do with the vases?” she 
asked dubiously. 

“ Leave them in the bottom of that cupboard in the 
corner. We’ll put all the most awful things there. 
I tell you what — I’ve got an old piece of drapery in 
my rooms that I’m not using. It’s not very splendid, 


176 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

but it’s better than that dirty tablecloth. We’ll roll 
that up and put it in the cupboard too, and I’ll lend 
you the drapery to throw over the table.” 

When the room was finished it was certainly more 
habitable than it had been for many decades of lodg- 
ers, and a great refuge to Beauty from the sordidness 
of the neighbourhood and her own discouragement. 
For her circumstances darkened rather than otherwise 
in the weeks that followed, and as her slender stock 
of money melted away she began to have that haunted 
feeling which has no vanishing-point except the streets. 
Michael Phayre could not help her. He lived so close 
to poverty himself that his few gifts to the girl meant 
personal sacrifices of which she did not dream. But she 
knew she could only afford the combined room, cheap 
though it was, for another week or so, and then what 
was to become of her? Such girls as Beauty have one 
market open; and her upbringing caused her to revolt 
from the abyss more fiercely than if she had been the 
daughter of a duchess. No class is so condemnatory 
of prostitution as the respectable poor, and there were 
many daughters of Mayfair who would have looked 
with more reckless philosophy to such an escape from 
starvation than Beauty Darling with her twice-sullied 
youth. To slip from ignorance, to slip for love, to 
slip even for vice, as she had known women to do, 
was excusable to her; but to make a trade of her wom- 
anhood was ghastly beyond words. And still the 
stage-door remained closed to her and the Agent said, 
“ No business doing, dear ! ” with callous indifference 
to her desperate need. 

Yet probably this was the period of Beauty’s highest 
mental development. Removed from the influence of 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 177 

the theatre, and the older girls whom she imitated, 
she was thrown back on an earlier training and her 
late association with Dr. Hardinge and his sister. 
Michael Phayre was her most constant companion, and 
he lent her his own books to read, so that her mind 
did not starve with her body. The plastic, adaptable 
nature absorbed the better teaching and ideals, and 
some sort of character began faintly to form in Beauty 
Darling, so that the great blue eyes were beautiful in 
expression as well as mere form and colouring. If 
she had been asked, she would have said with a shudder 
that this was the most awful time of her life, and she 
would hardly like to look back to it once it was over. 
But if she could have again seen the face that looked 
at her out of the cracked looking-glass in Mrs. Per- 
kin’s combined room she would have found something 
there that she had missed before. 

Her theatrical friends had not entirely deserted her, 
and still welcomed her when they met by chance in old 
haunts — in Maiden Lane outside an Agent’s, or if 
she went in to see a play “ on her card,” which means 
that an actor or actress giving a known name at a 
box-office will be passed in free. It being part of her 
profession to see a piece before she applied for a part 
in it, Beauty was obliged to go to plays now and then, 
though she would rather have stayed away. She was 
humiliated by the position, and shrank from meeting 
old friends. The stigma of her attempted suicide still 
hung about her, and she had been “ out ” for so long 
that it was evident that no one wanted her. Then 
she was shabby and hungry, and living in a low-class 
neighbourhood miles away from theatrical centres. 
She was ashamed to ask her old friends to come and 


178 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

see her, and had not told anyone but a few intimates 
her address. It is so easy to fall out of the race and 
be forgotten, and what with the ill-starred Pantomime 
engagement and then her stay with the Hardinges, it 
seemed to Beauty that in four or five months nobody 
even remembered that she had been on the salary list 
at Allonby’s. She was like a beginner, trying to get 
her foot upon the boards, and faced with the blank dis- 
appointment that comes to inexperience. 

When her money had been reduced to the last pound 
she began to look amongst her small possessions for 
such things as would be saleable, for she was paying 
five shillings a week for her room, and reduce ex- 
penditure as she would, she found it impossible to live 
on less than seven shillings a week for food. It was 
a cold May, but Beauty had given up a fire long ago, 
and spent the evenings shivering in her golf-cape until 
she could get warm in bed. Now it looked as if even 
the golf-cape would have to go, for it might be worth 
another five or even seven shillings, and she must do 
the best she could with a much-worn jacket. Her 
only other saleable possession was a little gold brooch 
that George Mannering had given her, and that she 
had not returned because there had been no definite 
break with George — they had just drifted out of each 
other’s lives, partly because Beauty had not the tenacity 
to keep up the connexion as Kitty Smart or one of the 
Satyr girls might have done. She valued the brooch 
both for sentimental reasons and because she liked 
wearing it, and flinched as much from parting with it 
as from the impending visit to the pawnbroker’s, look- 
ing with eyes that were tragic at its familiar glint at 
her throat. Why not? For Beauty’s strongest emo- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 179 

tions were for manifestations of prettiness. She saw 
the good to be gained in this world as material, in such 
things as furs and silks and jewellery, or pleasant 
sights and soft living. To lose the least of these was 
her tragedy, and she possessed so little ! 

She was forced by necessity into business habits not 
native to her, and under Michael Phayre’s tuition 
learned to limit herself to so much per day for food 
and to resist the temptation of a healthy appetite and 
a frame that was still growing. Michael had learned 
the same lesson many hard years since, and it was evi- 
denced in his spare frame and that wistful hunger in 
his eyes that one sees in the eyes of a lost dog. For 
his starved body hampered his art-loving soul and 
starved that too in that it hindered him from putting a 
healthy strength into his work. A loaf cost twopence, 
butter a penny, cheese a penny, vegetables or green 
salad a penny; tea was expensive, insomuch that the 
water had to be boiled, and Mrs. Perkins would not 
always make it for her lodger, while spirit stoves were 
out of the question. Paid for at the nearest eating- 
house tea cost threepence, including a slice of thick 
bread and butter ; but this could not be afforded twice 
a day if Beauty were to eat meat. So Michael figured 
it out for her, and helped her to make her purchases of 
cheese and butter in bulk as being cheaper, allow- 
ancing herself so much a day. If she exceeded the 
allowance she must go hungry at the end of the week. 
After a long tramp to the Agents, or sitting out an 
afternoon or evening performance, Beauty found it so 
hard to resist food in more expensive neighbourhoods 
than New Cross that she took to going with no more 
than her tram fare in her pocket, and very often she 


180 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


saved that by walking. On one of these occasions 
she had been the round of the Agents with the usual 
discouraging result, and after a bun and a glass of 
milk at a cheap shop she went in to Allonby’s on her 
card to see the new piece again. It was very much 
the same as those in which she had taken part, and 
either her fatigue, or the insufficient food of the past 
weeks, made her stupid, for the lights danced before 
her eyes and she could hardly follow the words — 
plot, of course, there was little or none. By the time 
she came out of the theatre her head was aching, and 
she felt sick for a cup of tea; but she had only two- 
pence with her, and to get home at all she must walk 
as far as Waterloo. As she turned with dragging 
steps into the Strand she nearly ran up against a girl 
coming towards her and looking up with a half-surly 
apology — for she was really overdone — she vaguely 
recognized a familiar face. 

“ Miss Darling,” said the girl, catching her by the 
arm, and Beauty realized that she must have swayed 
a little. “ My dear, are you ill? You look so white 
and tired. I haven’t seen you for ages. Do come and 
have tea with me ! ” 

It was Meta Chumleigh, a girl whom she had known 
slightly at Allonby’s, and Beauty had never been so 
glad to see the tall supple figure and frank face before. 
They had never been intimate, for Meta was in an- 
other dressing-room and of a different type to the 
Lilliput Troupe. She was a very quiet girl, and 
came of a different class, her father having been a 
naval officer who had died when only a commander 
and left his widow to be supported by a nominal pen- 
sion and the efforts of their one daughter. Meta did 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 181 


not begin to talk until they were safely ensconced in 
a corner of an A.B.C., where the smell of hot cake 
and steaming urns made Beauty’s empty chest literally 
contract. Even then Meta pretended a hunger she 
certainly did not feel to countenance poor Beauty’s 
onslaught upon the food before her, and this was not 
only due to the fact that she was Meta Chumleigh, 
with a little more tact and intuition than the rest of 
the girls who had been in No. 6 at Allonby’s. Any 
of them, the whole Lilliput Troupe or the Satyr girls, 
would have done as much or more, and it was the 
result of her theatrical experiences as much as nat- 
ural kindliness that helped Meta to understand the 
situation. There are no kinder hearts in the world, 
I think, than those that beat under the abominable 
finery of the chorus girl — no better humanity than 
what may be found behind the paint and powder and 
the bistred eyes. 

“ I am on at the Roscius,” Meta explained when 
her own cake and bread and butter had disappeared 
and it seemed safe to talk and let her guest still eat. 
“ I am only in the street-scene and one or two others 
— walking on. But I get a guinea a week. It’s not 
so much as in Musical Comedy, but — but I like the 
life better.” She hesitated a little over this, for fear 
Beauty should be hurt; but Beauty was too much 
wrapped up in her present distress to think about the 
insinuation. 

“ I’m awfully down on my luck!” she confessed, 
with a faint laugh. “ Been out for three months.” 

“ I am sorry ! I was out for some time after I 
left Allonby’s, and I began to think I should never 
get work again. But I did have a special week or so. 


182 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


If you’ll give me your address I’ll let you know th: 
minute I hear of anything — one does sometimes, you 
know. Or may I come and see you ? ” 

“ I’m in a beastly hole,” said Beauty with her blue 
eyes brimming. The relief from hunger and tire, 
and the unexpected sympathy, threatened to break 
down her self-control, never of a very robust quality. 
“I’m down at New Cross. Will you really come? 
I haven’t seen a soul for ages — I’ve hardly had tea 
to offer them ! ” 

“ Never mind about the tea — we’ll go out and 
have it at a shop. There must be some cafe within 
a mile or so.” (Even Meta had learned the theatrical 
pronunciation of that word.) 

She walked with Beauty as far as her tram, as if 
loath to part from her, and sent her home warmed 
and comforted. Meta was earning a guinea a week, 
as she said, out of which she had to help her mother 
and clothe and partly feed herself; but before she 
parted with Beauty Darling she had forced her to 
accept a loan of ten shillings, of which she saw not 
the slightest chance of repayment, besides paying for 
the tea. This was entirely theatrical, the only differ- 
ence in her generosity and a girl like Kittie Smart 
being that the latter would probably have been re- 
duced to borrow in her turn of another girl in the 
dressing-room at the Satyr, the usual system of help- 
ing one’s neighbour, on the Stage, being that of rob- 
bing Peter to pay Paul ; but the Recording Angel does 
not strike balances on the commercial lines of this 
world. Meta’s loan was purely one of self-denial, 
and it is tolerably certain that she suffered for it in 
the weeks that followed. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 183 

She kept her promise, however, and came out to 
New Cross to see Beauty in her cold and forlorn 
little room, and merrily insisted on taking her out 
to tea for the fun of sampling a “ cafe ” in the neigh- 
bourhood. There entered a factor into the proceed- 
ings, however, for which Meta had not bargained, 
and which filled her with' genuine surprise. For 
just as they were setting out from the dilapi- 
dated house where Beauty lived they were met 
almost on the doorstep by a young man who lifted 
his hat with a quiet, comprehensive glance at Beauty’s 
visitor. 

“ I was just coming round to see if you would have 
tea with me,” he said. “ But I’m afraid you’ve ac- 
cepted another invitation.” 

“ This is my friend, Mr. Phayre,” said Beauty, but 
without any of the consciousness with which one in- 
troduced a “ best boy.” “ Miss Chumleigh asked me 
to come out and have tea with her — ” She hesi- 
tated slightly, regretful at the chance of losing the 
tea through the obligation of accepting Michael’s hos- 
pitality. 

“ Suppose we all go and have it together? ” he said 
easily, shaking hands with Meta. “ I had no time 
or chance to get luncheon to-day, so I am pining for 
tea. I feel inclined to scream ‘ tea ’ at the top of my 
voice all down New Cross, until some one brings it 
to me! Have you ever felt like that, Miss Chum- 
leigh ? ” 

“ I always feel like that about three o’clock,” said 
Meta gravely. “ And it goes on till four, when I 
break down and either get it or scream as you de- 
scribe. The Dresser at the theatre where I am walk- 


184 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


in g on runs now, about five minutes to, she is so 
afraid of the noise I make.” 

He looked round at her quickly. “ You are on the 
Stage, too?” he said. 

“ I am not very far on,” said Meta serenely. “ I 
wish I were! Miss Darling and I were at Allonby’s 
together.” 

It occurred to Beauty with some misty surprise that 
Mr. Phayre and Meta were getting on quite well to- 
gether, as if there were some natural affinity between 
them. She had always regarded them both as rather 
odd and dull at times, and perhaps that was it — some 
natural stupidity that suited each with the other. But 
she did not care to be left out of the conversation, 
and was a little inclined to sulk at finding herself less 
in touch with either of her companions than they did 
with themselves. They quoted books she had never 
read, and they noticed the same things going on round 
them while having tea, as if by instinct. Beauty 
wanted to talk about the Stage and her own ill-luck. 
It did not interest her in the least that three people 
at the next table were like some “ mad tea-party ” of 
which the others spoke, nor did she know what they 
meant by the Dormouse, the March Hare, and the 
Hatter. She said openly at last, “ I think it’s you 
two who are the March Hares — you’re mad 
enough ! ” 

“ I shall go home and make a drawing of a Much- 
ness,” said Michael, laughing. “ It is evidently my 
metier. Who knows? It might lay the foundation 
of all my fortunes.” 

“ I know exactly what it would be like,” said Meta 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 185 

dreamily. “ It’s the shape of a leg of mutton and it’s 
pea-green ! ” 

“ Excuse me, Miss Chumleigh — it’s bright 
ochre ! ” 

“ What are you talking about? ” said Beauty, pout- 
ing. “ I want some more tea ! ” 

Meta, with some penitence, poured it out, and tried 
to keep her thoughts from answering Michael 
Phayre’s quite so quickly. But the more she looked 
at and listened to him the more she marvelled. The 
spare figure and worn face had nothing whatever in 
common with Beauty Darling to her mind, try as she 
might to find the connexion, unless it were the at- 
traction of opposites. “ He is a gentleman, and he 
understands!” she said to herself for the fifth time. 
“ I should like to see his work.” 

Michael paid for his own tea, but he did not at- 
tempt to pay for the girls too. Meta had asked 
Beauty to tea, and he could not have afforded the 
three payments. That is one of the small pin-pricks 
of poverty. But being all three Bohemians the mat- 
ter simplified itself. They walked back with Beauty 
to her lodging, and then Michael offered to see Miss 
Chumleigh to her tram, promising to go back after- 
wards to have the deferred chat with his first friend. 
Beauty did not mind — as he was coming back. She 
was only jealous of her obvious rights. 

“ If you do hear of anything that would mean work 
for her,” Phayre said, as he and Meta walked down 
to the stopping place of the cars together, “ I am sure 
you will let her know, won’t you ? It is growing 
rather a desperate situation.” 


i8 6 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ Yes, I will, indeed. Mr. Phayre, are you a So- 
cialist? ” 

“ No. Why did you ask?” 

“ Because sometimes I think that I am growing into 
one. It is so dreadful to know that we can’t work 
when we would ! ” 

“ I think,” said Michael slowly, “ that the work is 
always there — if we will take it. Just now it seems 
as if Beauty were really being defrauded of a right 
to live; but if Justice were on her defence she might 
plead that Beauty had thrown her own chances away 
and gambled with her luck. Even now she might 
have got some other employment if she had chosen 
to try — but she will only attempt to get stage work.” 

“ Yes, I see — ” Meta turned away her face as 
if from some recollection. “ But sometimes you may 
lose your place through no fault of your own. Any- 
how, I will keep my ears open, and help her in every 
way I can.” 

“ Yes, but, Miss Chumleigh, you must not let her 
borrow of you,” he said with unexpected firmness. 
“ I know how generous all girls in your position are, 
but it is not fair on you and it is not really good for 
Beauty. If I had let her she would have written to 
some very good friends she made in Dublin and asked 
for help from them, and they had already helped her 
to the utmost of their power. And as long as she 
could go on borrowing she would be content to drift, 
and the habit would grow on her more and more. 
You know,” he said with his strained smile, “ it is 
not everybody who can borrow. And it is on the 
whole a dangerous facility.” 

“ Yes,” she said in a lower voice. “ I see! ” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 187 

“If you will come and see her, and keep in touch 
with her, you will do her far more good than by 
lending her money. Help her by the chance of an 
engagement, by all means, but spur her into action and 
urge her on to try, rather than make it possible for her 
to sit down with her hands in her lap.” 

“ How well you know her ! ” she said with some 
wonderment. 

For the first time he flushed, the uncomfortable red 
of manhood, but he answered with simple directness, 
“ Yes, I know her very well.” 

“ She is very, very pretty ! ” said Meta with genuine 
earnestness. “ You do not know what pleasure it 
used to give me merely to look at her.” 

“ She has the most perfect face of her type that I 
ever saw,” said Michael candidly. “ Both the lines of 
it and the colouring are most beautiful. Here is your 
tram — please don’t get lost, or we might never see 
you again, and it has been a very great pleasure.” 

It had been a very great pleasure to Meta too, 
though she did not say so. The word “ affinity ” 
has been so misconstrued that it has come to have 
an ill meaning between the sexes; but where it really 
exists it brings one of the purest and most human 
of pleasures. Meta was frankly sorry if she did not 
encounter Michael Phayre in her pilgrimages to New 
Cross, and held out the right hand of friendship with- 
out any more complicated feeling to spoil her pleasure. 
Once he took both girls to his queer attic of a studio, 
and showed them his work; but the visit was not a 
success from Beauty’s point of view because it was 
too much of a success for Meta. She was beginning 
to see that there were other attractions besides the 


1 88 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


pretty face that she had thought irresistible, and a 
quickened sense told her that Meta was appreciating 
and sympathizing as she could not do. It made her 
dissatisfied with herself, and a little jealous, though 
not in the elementary fashion she would have felt 
about George Manner ing. Nevertheless she grew 
more and more silent, and by the time they had 
walked together to her rooms as usual the conversa- 
tion was restricted to the two others, and she was 
struggling with a desire to cry. The long weeks of 
failure to find work had left her with a sense of de- 
feat and humiliation, and this last experience of her 
own attractions failing her was the straw that broke 
the camel’s back. Michael went to the tram as usual 
with Meta Chumleigh, and when he returned to 
Beauty’s lodging, as he had promised, he found her 
sitting listlessly by the empty fireplace with her face 
buried in her hands. She was inarticulate in her 
trouble, and it took all his intuition to realize that the 
struggle seemed suddenly at its blackest and too hard 
for her. For some minutes he said nothing, but only 
patted the curly head with his kind, thin hand, and 
let her feel that a comrade in misfortune respected 
her breakdown. The only thing that perhaps escaped 
him was that she feared to lose his allegiance also, 
and that the joy of his friendship with Meta had been 
this other girl’s undoing. 

“ I want you to do me a favour, Beauty,” he said 
after a while. “ I’m too hard up myself for a model, 
and I’ve an order for some black-and-whites for a 
weekly paper. I know you hate posing, but if you 
will stand for me for a few minutes and let me make 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 189 

a rough drawing of you here, it will be awfully good 
of you. I’ve brought my tools — ” 

But before he could produce the well-worn pencil 
and stump and sketch-book she had flung off his hand 
and was on her feet, amazing him with a new phase 
of excitement and emotion. 

“ I can’t stand to-night — I couldn’t bear it ! I 
hate the very sight of your damned tools — it brings 
back something I want to forget — if you draw me 
now I shall go mad.” 

He looked at her splendid little face with the fury 
in it as if stricken dumb. He had always wondered 
a little at her prejudice against artists’, or models’ 
work, but Beauty had been consistently reticent over 
her past experiences. Perhaps the confession she had 
already made to Dr. Hardinge had loosened her 
tongue; perhaps her present emotional mood was re- 
sponsible for what followed, for she suddenly began 
to speak, and never in all her stage life was she so 
simply effective as standing before Michael Phayre 
in her shabby black frock with her hands twisted to- 
gether behind her back. This was a trick of Beauty’s, 
and threw the lines of her figure into unconscious 
prominence. Most women who grip their hands 
throw them outwards; Beauty threw them back, and 
only her tense, strained body told of their restless 
clasp. Her thick hair made a frame for her lifted 
face, and the low line of jaw running to the chin was 
beautiful in its severity. The tragedy of the brows 
and the curve of the lips struck Michael as never 
before. 

“ There was a man — an artist — when I was a 


190 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

kid,” she panted. “Just before I ran away from 
home and got taken on at Allonby’s — ” (she had 
never admitted running away to him before. He 
waited for further revelations). “He came and 
stayed in our cottage because he wanted to paint me 
— he told me so afterwards. Mother wouldn’t let 
him at first, but he got round her — he could get 
round anyone.” The tensely strung body shuddered 
with utter revulsion, and a look of fear crept into 
the blue eyes that made Michael want to hide his own. 
“ He used to get hold of me and ask me to come into 
his room,” she said huskily, as if the old eerie feeling 
of unnatural power haunted her yet. “ I did it at 
last, and then — you know ! ” — Her voice broke 
down, but suddenly gathered force again and she 
burst out afresh, so that she startled her listener. “ I 
hated him when it was too late — I couldn’t bear the 
thought of him — he was middle-aged — he made me 
creep. Oh, how I hate the touch of old men! ” 

Michael could not bear uncleanness. He pushed the 
thought from himself, and tried to push it from her 
by a side issue. 

“ I won’t ask you to let me draw you again, Beauty. 
Tell me about your mother. Why did you run 
away ? ” 

“ She wasn’t really my mother.” The girl spoke 
sullenly. All the terrible force seemed to have gone 
out of her figure with that last outcry, and she turned 
from him listlessly. “ She brought me up, that’s all. 
I was what she called a come-by-chance — a bastard, 
I suppose.” 

Michael frowned a little at the relish of the last 
term. He recognized that Beauty had a sneaking 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 191 

pride in her unknown parentage, for if no one could 
say that it was superior to the class in which she 
had lived, they could not, by the same token, prove 
that it was inferior. She had boasted to him of her 
possible origin before. 

“ I suppose your foster-mother was kind to you ? ” 
he hazarded in the gentlest reproof. 

“ She brought me up,” was all that Beauty would 
allow. “ When she found out about that beast she 
was going to beat me. So I ran away.” 

“ And you have never written to her since — never 
let her know where you were?” 

“ I meant to go back — some day,” Beauty ad- 
mitted, a trifle shamefacedly. “ But she didn’t want 
me. She could have found me easily enough, I sup- 
pose, if she had tried. She said she’d turn me into 
the gutter I came from, and I expect she was glad 
when I went.” 

Michael sighed a little. The sores of life seemed 
rather too deep for him to heal. “ Still I think you 
ought to have gone back and told her what you were 
doing, or at least have written,” he said. “ When 
her anger was cooler she would have listened to you, 
and understood how it all happened. She had kept 
and clothed you all your life, Beauty. You owe it 
to her that you were rescued from the gutter any- 
how and not sent to the workhouse.” 

The girl did not answer. She was leaning her 
elbows on the hard wood of the newly revealed man- 
telshelf, and her face in her hands. The back of her 
head was towards Michael, who could see nothing 
but the slightly built figure and the bright curling 
hair. Over Beauty’s shoulder looked the amazing 


192 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

face of a sky-blue cat — one of the Beasts that now 
adorned the shelf; he could see the creature’s cheerful 
grin, as if it found some hideous humour in the 
situation. Beauty called it “Cuddle-puddles,” as he 
knew. 

“ I never cared a damn about him ! ” she said in- 
distinctly, with sudden incoherence. “If I had I’d 
have stayed and braved it out; she might have beat 
me black and blue! It was different in Dublin. I 
did love Georgie — but he’s never written — and his 
people took him away — and if I could have seen him 
once — ” 

The sobs came now in good earnest. Michael 
Phayre walked slowly across the room and looked 
down into the street below the dusky window. The 
May evening was still light enough to show him the 
barrows where the hawkers plied a busy trade, from 
roots of Marvel of Peru to bootlaces and old songs; 
and to and fro on the pavement and in the roadway 
went still busier men and women with anxious, heavy 
faces unlightened by any glimpse of a more leisured 
life. He knew it all so well — his existence for 
nearly nine years had been passed amongst such scenes 
as this, in an intimate poverty that had made it a 
very real and despairing thing to him. Only his 
work had raised him out of the surroundings whose 
monotony threatened to drag him down — that and 
the steadfast hope of a future, where he might have 
the right to breathe a purer air than that of New 
Cross, to mix with a class that was native to him 
rather than the sordid crowd there below. It was 
the mentality for which he starved rather than the 
physical association. He had just gone on in the 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 193 

certainty that his work was honest, and that some 
day the people he wanted to understand him would 
understand. But suppose he took a fresh burden on 
his shoulders in the shape of a wife from that class 
below, he would never reach the cultured atmosphere 
he craved. The constant association with such a girl 
as Beauty Darling, for instance, meant patient years 
of struggle before he could even hope that she might 
meet him half-way; there could be no hope of that 
precious mutual understanding and communion that 
had seemed to Michael so perfect a thing that it made 
marriage almost too sacred for words. The tempta- 
tion was by no means one of the flesh; it looked, 
indeed, rather like an obligation than a temptation — • 
the possible power to shield and raise a nature too 
weak and ignorant to raise itself — a nature that 
wanted love, however, even in its simplest form, and 
that in its loneliness would turn to him did he so 
offer himself. . . . He looked down at the costers’ 
stalls and saw all that he had fought and striven 
for floating away from him. A woman was bar- 
gaining for a pansy root to put in a flower-pot or on 
an airless window-sill and choke the gracious life 
out of the flower, no doubt. He breathed a sigh of 
actual relief when she put it down and did not buy 
it. All the truth of Nature and God that he had 
humbly hoped to gather to himself through the 
medium of his art, giving it out again as the sun 
gives life, seemed to be dragging him with cords of 
steel away from the mere contemplation of such sac- 
rifice. . . . And there was Beauty Darling by the 
empty fireplace, crying noisily, like all her class, and 
very friendless. He came back slowly across the 
13 


i 9 4 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

room and stood beside her, looking down into the 
empty grate and not touching her. 

“ Cry it out, Beauty/’ he said in an odd, strained 
voice. “ If it’s worth crying over. Did you love him 
very badly, poor child?” 

Beauty nodded and choked. She was really very 
sorry for herself, and it was the more wonderful that 
she had been silent on the subject for so long. “ I’ve 
wr-written to him thr-three times, and he’s ne-never 
answered ! ” she gasped. 

“ Probably he never got the letters,” said Phayre 
quietly. “If he did — Well, never mind, Beauty,” 
he added hastily as her sobbing grew more hysterical. 
“ W e’ll take it for granted that he is not worth writ- 
ing to again and try to face the future without him.' 
I must go home now, but I’ll come again on Thursday, 
and then — perhaps I shall have some new scheme 
for your future.” 

He had so often given her difficulties his time and 
consideration, and had done his best to obtain tem- 
porary work for her, that the last words were natural 
enough. Yet she lifted her head quickly and looked 
at him with blurred blue eyes in her new compre- 
hension. Michael Phayre had never made love to her 
— had never kissed her except that once when she was 
going to Dublin, and she knew with some awed sur- 
prise that her face was only a pleasant thing to look at 
to him, as the blue sky or the daisies in the grass — not 
a cup of red wine to stir his veins as it did those of 
other men. Beauty knew he did not love her, even in 
the elementary fashion in which men had done for 
some short space ; but she knew also that he was going 
to suggest their marrying, and she was so forlorn that 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 195 

she felt she would be thankful to have him always 
at hand to stand between her and the rest of the 
large world that had somehow overflowed the com- 
fortable circle of the footlights. They would be just 
as poor together as apart, but it would not be nearly 
so miserable for her. For Michael she did not think. 
His straight, spare shoulders had been ready for the 
responsibility of her troubles so often that to weight 
them permanently seemed natural. It was only to- 
day, when she had seen him more occupied with Meta 
Chumleigh than with herself, that she had realized 
how much she depended upon him, and the mere sus- 
picion of his reverting to some one else had fright- 
ened her. It was some vague comfort to think that 
after all she was paramount; for if he did not want 
to marry her he need not ask her — and he had 
thought of asking her at least. 

Michael Phayre, walking home to his own bare 
rooms — the barer for certain little comforts he had 
transported to Beauty’s — threaded his way amongst 
the barrows and tried to fix his mind upon the stars. 
A woman was screaming out personalities at a girl 
in a slipshod blouse and a shawl over her head, and 
the girl had a horrible look of Beauty, though she was 
neither so young nor so pretty. As he passed, 
Michael heard her laugh — and his fine mouth set 
itself rather painfully the while he still looked steadily 
up to the evening sky and the few stars he could 
just begin to see, imagining those he could not. They 
were all there — Aldeboran, Orion, B Centuri, the 
big planets of Charles’s Wain — there somewhere, 
even though human beings round him were turning 
earth into a dung-heap. Meta Chumleigh’s face rose 


196 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

on his sensitive memory in sharp contrast to that of 
the girl with the shawl over her head — the girl who 
had laughed; and he tried not to wonder what it 
would be like to hear such a laugh in one’s own 
home. 


It was on the very next day that Beauty called at 
Allonby’s. 

She had been there many times, with an effort to 
see the Manager himself, and had once or twice seen 
Hughes (who had by no means forgotten the black 
mark against her name), and oftener still been 
brusquely told that those in authority were not “ see- 
ing people ” at all. She had given up calling in de- 
spair, but her renewed acquaintance with Meta Chum- 
leigh had roused the spirit of emulation in her again, 
and sent her back on a forlorn hope; for if Meta had 
overcome her ill-luck and obtained an engagement, 
though only to walk on, it seemed incredible to Beauty 
that she herself should fail. Michael Phayre’s new 
attitude with regard to her too — though she did not 
realize it — lent her a new courage. If no one would 
see her, and she could not get a shop (engagement), 
she had still the comfortable feeling at the back of 
her mind that she might marry and have a man on 
whom to depend. It really was a comfortable feel- 
ing, and had a mental effect like warm wine upon 
her as she entered the theatre, so that her question to 
the stage-doorkeeper as to whether Mr. Allonby was 
there was more confident than usual. The door- 
keeper, Hollis, recognized her, and nodded as to an 
old acquaintance. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 197 

“ Hulloa, Miss Darling, it's you, is it ? ” he said 
familiarly. 

“ Yes, it’s me,” said Beauty, not particularly of- 
fended. “ Is Papa about?” 

“ Want to see him? I think he’s somewhere in 
the House. Here, Tommy ” — he called to a boy in 
the employment of the theatre — “ go and ask if Mr. 
Allonby can see Miss Darling.” 

Beauty’s heart beat high with sudden hope. She 
had never had a chance to see Edgar Allonby him- 
self since that time two years since when he had been 
taken ill, and it was during his 'absence that Hughes 
had dismissed her. He had always been kind to her, 
and if she could only contrive to have a personal inter- 
view, without Hughes or anyone else preventing her, 
she might represent her desperate plight so that he 
would take her on again. Her letters to him had 
always been answered by his secretary, Lewis, who 
had never been a special friend of Beauty’s, and had 
possibly only been officially reported to Allonby as 
another application when there were no vacancies. It 
was with difficulty that she controlled her eagerness 
so as to appear unconcerned while she waited and lis- 
tened to the doorkeeper’s gossip, and it was an effort 
to return suitable replies. But in a few minutes 
Tommy returned and said that Mr. Allonby would see 
her, and Beauty followed him with a throbbing heart 
to the well-known room. 

Nothing had changed. The heavy curtains still 
hung over the windows and mitigated the May sun- 
shine, but the applicants’ chair was placed to face the 
light, so that the Manager could judge of her pos- 
sibilities, whereas his own had its back to the window 


198 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

and left him in shadow at his writing-desk. The 
high fender with its cushioned top still stood before 
the fire — it was a chilly day — and the grand piano 
with its suggestion of the real business of trying 
voices occupied the middle of the room. Even the 
tray with its whisky and soda was still within easy 
distance of the Manager’s hand on a side-table. Al- 
lonby himself showed traces of his illness; he was 
thinner, and the broad, clean-shaven face was more 
lined; but he looked as capable and vigorous as he 
had two or three years ago, as he held out a cordial 
hand to his old protegee. 

“Well, my dear, and how are you?” he said, put- 
ting her into the chair facing the light while he still 
held her hand. Beauty was immediately conscious 
of her shabby, respectable black frock, the plain straw 
hat, and her hair tied back with its schoolgirl bow. 
She was as little like an Allonby girl as she had been 
when she first came into that room, and just now 
she was troubled to know that her face was thinner 
and whiter than usual, and that her eyes were faintly 
shadowed from last night’s tears. 

“ I am rather down on my luck, Mr. Allonby,” she 
said with a faint laugh. “ I can’t get anything to 
do.” 

“ H’m ! ” said the Manager, with a calculating 
sound behind his closed lips. He was looking 
steadily at Beauty from his vantage-point, and she 
wondered why. Her looks seemed to have failed her 
lately. “ Business is slack,” he said. “ There’s noth- 
ing much doing. What was your last engagement? ” 

“ I was in Pantomime last winter — ” she hesitated, 
and flushed painfully, wondering if he had heard of 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 199 

her escapade. “ But I broke down — I was ill — ■” 

“ Why did you leave us ? ” he asked abruptly. 

“ Mr. Hughes did not want me in the new piece 
— it was when you were ill. I was awfully sorry ! ” 

Beauty spoke eagerly, hoping to make good her 
position; but her hopes were rudely dispelled by Al- 
lonby’s next words. 

“ I know — you were late one night, and then im- 
pertinent to Mr. Hughes, and we do not excuse either 
of those faults at Allonby ’s. Then you went to 
Dublin and did not like that, and after three or four 
months of Pantomime there was a very unpleasant 
story connected with your name — eh? I know a 
great deal more about my girls than they think, Miss 
Darling! ” 

Beauty gasped, and relapsed into silence as the only 
safe refuge. She had no excuse ready, and she felt 
a little frightened of those shrewd eyes in the wide, 
hairless face. Then suddenly she remembered the 
dreary little room at New Cross and her own hopeless 
outlook, and desperation drove her into one last plea. 

“ I’ve been out three or four months, Mr. Allonby, 
and I don’t know what to do to earn my living — 
I’d go out in a fit-up crowd gladly — can’t you give 
me anything to do ? ” 

She turned her great hungry eyes on the controller 
of her fate and they were bright with fear. Allonby 
sat up a little sharply, as if he had met with something 
he had not expected, and his tone altered. 

“ Come ! come ! ” he said. “ I hope it’s not as bad 
as that. Girls do get into tight corners sometimes, 
but we don’t let them kill themselves. .Why didn’t 
you come to me before ? ” 


200 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ I have — ■ often — but I couldn’t see you.” 

“ Well ! ” He made a mental note that was not in 
favour of some of his staff. “ I will see what can 
be done for you. You are an old member of Al- 
lonby’s, though not very old otherwise. What is 
your age now ? ” 

“ Seventeen — nearly eighteen,” said Beauty, for- 
getting what she had told him four years since; but 
if he noticed it he did not say so. Instead, he got 
up and went to the piano, running his hands over 
the keys with a soft skilled touch that no one would 
have expected from his blunt fingers. “ Come and 
try your voice,” he said, and Beauty rose obediently 
and stood beside him while he played the prelude of 
a well-known song in a former piece he had produced 
— a song that every Allonby girl knew by heart. 
Beauty began to sing, trembling. Her voice had im- 
proved both in compass and depth, and the enforced 
rest since her work in Pantomime had saved the over- 
strain; but she was exhausted and frightened, and 
had had too little food of late to do herself justice. 
After a verse the Manager stopped and looked at her 
keenly. 

“ When did you last eat ? ” he said. 

“ I had some breakfast this morning.” — 

“ Not enough for a healthy, growing girl evidently,” 
he commented. “ You look half starved. Look 
here, little girl” — he laid his strong hand on her 
arm and held her while he spoke — “you have be- 
haved very foolishly, and I think you have had a 
lesson. But I don’t like my girls to be unhappy or 
ill-treated, and I’m going to take you back. You 
will have to work hard, and I think your voice should 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 201 


be properly trained. I thought so before, but you 
were too young; and I shall sign you on for three 
years so that there will be no chance for you to go 
to the Satyr or anywhere else.” 

“Oh, Mr. Allonby, I don’t want to!” said poor 
Beauty, with a trembling underlip. “ I shall be so 
glad to get back to Allonby ’s and to feel safe 
here ! ” 

“ There, there, poor child ! ” He rose from the 
piano, his heavy figure towering over Beauty’s, and 
put his arm round her slight shoulde/s with a pressure 
that drew her against him. It seemed to her a 
promise of protection and salvation, and she almost 
nestled against him in her relief. “ Papa ” had al- 
ways been a favourite with his girls, and though 
Beauty had never come much in contact with him be- 
fore, she had a devout faith in his power and im- 
portance. 

“ Are you going to be a good girl now, and work 
hard ? ” he said, turning the fair little face up with 
his big hand. “ You’re not a child in experience, are 
you, Beauty ? ” 

Then, with a bound, her heart seemed to leap into 
her throat, and she almost cried out. The monster 
that had pursued her in man all her short life was 
upon her again, where she least expected it. Her eyes 
fell swiftly before the Manager’s, and she pulled 
herself together to resist shrinking. For she could 
not lose her chance — she dared not face the future 
with this last hope gone. Allonby spoke truly when 
he said he knew more about his girls than they guessed. 
Beauty’s “ experience ” in Dublin had evidently 
reached his ears and placed her in a new light. She 


202 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

was a girl who had been seduced, and so ripened 
into womanhood. 

“ I’m going to look after you for the future, and 
I can’t have you starved. Here is something to go 
on with till you are getting your salary,” he said, 
slipping an envelope into her hand. She felt the 
crisp note crackle inside. “ You can work off the 
debt later on. Hughes will let you know about re- 
hearsals. Now, are you feeling better?” 

“Yes; thank you.” She had almost added “sir,” 
as to her master. 

“ Then we understand each other ? ” 

For a minute she paused and looked backwards. 
In her mind she saw an alternative of anxiety and 
fear and sordid drudgery, with poverty always dodg- 
ing her steps and success just out of her reach — a 
future with Michael Phayre, in which her prettiness 
faded and she got work only to lose it again; for 
she knew that Michael would oblige her to go 
straight, and never buy favour, by some quiet power 
of his own. The very comfort of Allonby’s well- 
furnished room was a weight in the scale to turn her 
shivering fancy from the ugliness and privations that 
she hated with all her half-grown soul. She knew 
what Allonby’s interest meant; but it included a sure 
and steady rise in her profession, the very thing, 
ironically enough, that Dr. Hardinge had urged on 
her. Her hesitation was so momentary that the man 
hardly felt it. He drew her closer to him again and 
kissed her soft, flawless face, and even while he did 
so Beauty was remembering how she had told Phayre 
that she .loathed middle-aged men even to touch her. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 203 

But then she loathed insufficient food and sordid sur- 
roundings still more. 

Michael Phayre did not come to see her that even- 
ing. He had gone on an excursion into the suburbs 
on his own account, with a weary sense of duty that 
overcame his rebelling senses. When he got back 
to his bare, clean room that was half studio and half 
bedroom and all garret, he found a note from Beauty 
brimming with the excitement of good news at last. 
The note was fairly well written and perfectly spelled, 
for her old training stood her in so much account, 
but there was a quality in it that made Michael ponder 
nevertheless. He had the fine ear of the artist, and 
some note rang false. When he went round to see 
her the next day he found her looking better and 
brighter than for many weeks, but her eyes looked out 
of the window, or at the soft shades of the “ drapery ” 
he had lent her to cover the table, rather than at him. 

“ Where were you yesterday ? ” she burst out al- 
most before greeting him. “ I was dying to talk to 
somebody. Isn’t it good luck that I went to Allonby’s 
quite on the chance? Mr. Allonby is taking me on 
again. I am to rehearse next week for chorus, and 
then he is going to see if he can’t give me something 
better. I had a letter from him this morning.” 

“ That’s good, Beauty ! ” said Michael kindly, but 
his eyes followed her restless movements with the 
loving anxiety of a dog. “ I hope they won’t make 
you rehearse for long — it means a lot of work and 
no pay ! ” 

“ Oh, but I am in funds ; Allonby made me an ad- 
vance yesterday. Five pounds — ” She stopped 


204 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

suddenly and moved one of the Beasts on the mantel- 
shelf with nervous fingers. “ I changed it at the 
post office this morning; you must come to supper, 
and we’ll have an orgy ! ” But through her high, 
excited laugh he still heard that false pitch of un- 
easiness. 

“That was good of Mr. Allonby,” said Michael 
quietly. “ But you’ll have to work it off later, Beauty, 
and that means no money coming in again. We’ll 
wait for the orgy, and not spend it beforehand.” 

“ Oh, but he meant me to spend it ! He’ll pay all 
right — ” Then she caught herself -up. “ Allonby’s 
is always good to its people. I know Mr. Allonby 
gave me the money to run me until he could get me 
into the theatre again.” 

“Is that usual, Beauty?” 

Michael walked deliberately across the room and 
stood beside her, looking down on the bright head 
and the face turned from his own. Tie did not wait 
for her answer, but went on speaking deliberately 
without allowing himself time to think: 

“ Beauty, don’t take that money unless you mean to 
pay it back legitimately. If it’s an advance you 
mustn’t draw any salary until it is wiped off. We’ll 
face it together somehow ; will you ? I’m glad you’ve 
got work — I’m honestly glad ; but — let me stand be- 
tween you and anything more.” 

He waited, and in the long pause that followed it 
seemed to him that many things — hopes and beliefs 
and ideals — sank down out of reach. This playing 
a waiting game was a horrible thing. For he had 
not asked anything definite of her — she had not con- 
fessed anything definite of Edgar Allonby; yet both 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 205 

knew what the other meant. It was for the girl to 
make the next move. 

“ I wish you wouldn’t throw cold water on it, any- 
how, ” said Beauty crossly, seeming to collect herself 
with a wrench. “ Of course I’ll pay off fair and 
square. Mr. Allonby is going to have my voice 
trained and means to push me — I can’t quarrel with 
him. I was just beginning to feel alive again, and 
then you come with a long face and want me to go 
on pinching and scraping and living as if nothing 
was altered ! ” 

Her voice gathered decision as she went on. It 
was quite obvious that she had made up her mind, 
and without any more actual putting into words she 
had chosen her path. He looked round the forlorn 
room which all their efforts had hardly mitigated, 
and then he looked at the slight young figure and the 
rich fairness of her face, and he did not wonder. 
Beauty’s soul was still too ungrown to lift her clear 
of her surroundings. She hated ugliness by instinct, 
and she shrank from physical pain. It was a weigh- 
ing of the scales between her flinching from another 
elderly man who stretched greedy hands to her youth, 
and her flinching from the flints of virtue, and her 
recent experiences had turned the scale. Michael saw 
that all his intended sacrifice had been in vain, and 
that if he asked her outright to marry him now she 
would find an excuse for herself. The struggle of 
last night fell flat — it was almost ludicrous. 

“ I am sorry I was a wet blanket,” he said in the 
same quiet manner. “ To turn to another subject: 
I went down to Wandlebridge to-day and made some 
inquiries for you.” 


206 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


Her face flushed half angrily, and she turned to 
him so taken aback that her little red mouth remained 
open. 

“ Mrs. Darling is dead,” said Michael, answering 
her unasked question. “ She seems to have died 
very shortly after you left her, which accounts for 
no inquiries having been made about you. Her sister 
took possession of everything, and the cottage has 
been in the possession of other people for years. That 
was all I could find out.” 

“ Thank you ! ” said Beauty in a low voice. He 
had not softened the news to her, for she had never 
confessed to any feeling for her foster-mother, nor 
had her behaviour shown much consideration for the 
only home she had known. She meant to go back 
some day — that was all. Even now, when she 
learned that the one link with her past was severed, 
she was not really upset. She did not want to cry 
about Mrs. Darling, though she felt she ought, and 
her suddenly subdued manner was much more due to 
Michael than to the news of the death. There was 
something that was new to her, almost stern, in his 
face and voice as he said good-bye, and the words 
echoed in her ears with a finality that startled her 
and made her long to call him back. She was a 
little frightened, and it seemed as if she would close 
the door on one period of her life and its possibilities 
when Michael Phayre closed the actual door of the 
room and left her. She wondered why this seemed 
so much more a line of demarcation to her than any 
former incident, though they had been so much more 
tragic, not realizing that hitherto Fate had had some- 
thing to do with deciding her course, and had lifted 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 207 

responsibility from her shoulders. Now she was de- 
liberately acting for herself. 

“ I shall have to write and tell Dr. Hardinge,” 
said Michael Phayre to himself, even while he crossed 
the room. “ I hope he won’t think I have failed in 
my trust. I should like to meet him once, actually 
in the flesh ” — for they had only known each other 
by letters and through the mutual interest of Beauty 
Darling. At the door he looked back, and then came 
slowly towards her again with outstretched hands. 

“ I shall always be ready to be your friend, Beauty,” 
he said simply. “ I always am your friend — what- 
ever you do.” • 

She did not take his hands, but with one quick 
glance at him she flung herself down in the shabby 
arm-chair and buried her face. She was not crying, 
for Beauty’s crying was always audible, but he saw 
that the red blood had risen to the roots of her hair, 
and he mercifully turned away and left her to her 
realization of what she had done already in intention. 

Looked at in one light it was lamentable. But on 
the other side — for there was another side — it might 
be said that the angels had fought for the soul of 
Michael Phayre and had saved him, though through 
the medium of another. He had tried to rescue 
Beauty Darling; but it had been she who had rescued 
him. 


CHAPTER IX 


T>EAUTY DARLING sat before the table in her 
U dressing-room, making up. The threefold glass, 
carefully arranged to reflect her in full face and profile 
under a strong light, presented a mere copy of the 
round-faced girl whom Trevor Guy had seen in 
the apple-tree, but its characteristics were essentially 
the same, for Beauty had kept her good gift of typical 
Youth — dewy red lips, downy skin, and unclouded 
blue eyes, with that ennobling note of tragedy in the 
line of the brows. The shape of the face, too, lent 
itself to an impression of childish roundness, the low 
line of jaw and short chin defying added years to 
lengthen it much. Beauty was nineteen — nearly 
twenty — but as she pushed the sunny curls away 
from her temples to rub on the grease-paint, she 
looked hardly more than sixteen. 

The last two or three years had been momentous 
ones for her career, and had been very busy. She 
had had to train hard in the production of her voice 
whether she would or no, for her master was in 
earnest and would take no pupils who did not work. 
Beauty, with her love of ease, would no doubt have 
shirked the training if she could, and have trusted to 
an indulgent public and her own attractions to carry 
her On triumphantly in the competition of stage 
favourites; she owed it to other agencies than her 
own throughout her life that her work was thorough, 
208 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 209 

and that the best that could be was made out of plastic 
material. The singing lessons had improved her 
pronunciation too, though in moments of excitement 
she still echoed the twang of the theatre girls — an 
indelible mark that once gained is never lost. Edgar 
Allonby had seen that she lived healthily and well, 
without undue excitement (he discouraged supper- 
parties and later hours than the theatre entailed), and 
that she had regular meals, his experience of girls 
leading him to think that their chosen diet was French 
pastry and an ice-cream-soda at odd moments. 

Beauty’s physique had developed on its natural 
lines, and she did not suffer much from anaemia or 
fatigue in consequence. She was still a small woman, 
slenderly built, with small hands and feet, but her 
figure was soft and round and rather inclined to be 
full (the more admired from the stalls), falling to 
an ideal waist that suggested the half-humorous lines : 

“ What an arm ! — and what a waist 
For an arm ! ” 

There had been no scandal — not much, at least. 
Beauty lived alone, that was all, in quite respectable 
rooms on the South side, near Chelsea. She no 
longer chummed with other girls, which would have 
been conclusively in her favour, but her advancement 
at Allonby’s was explainable by the acknowledged 
fact that Allonby was always generous to talent, and 
was on the look-out for a star. Beauty had not been 
rushed to the front ; she was only playing second lead 
now, but she had her dressing-room to herself, and 
her Dresser lived in the same house with her and 
was practically her maid. Janet was a shrewd young 
14 


2io THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


woman, who knew that if she talked she would lose 
both her private service with Beauty and her engage- 
ment at the theatre. 

According to Michael Phayre’s theory Beauty Dar- 
ling ought to have returned thanks every time she 
looked into a glass for gifts which she had done 
little to deserve; but there was nothing but a very 
common-sensical knit between her brows as she 
turned the mirrors this way and that to get every 
point of light upon her face and expose it to an 
ordeal as severe as the footlights. The make-up was 
not coming rightly, and Beauty was upset. 

“ Give me my two-and-a-half, for God’s sake, 
Janet!” she said. “ My face is a filthy failure to- 
night.” 

“ It looks all right from here,” said the Dresser, 
handing the flesh-coloured stick of paint over Beauty’s 
shoulder. The girl did not answer, but went on add- 
ing to the crust on her fair skin, while Janet answered 
a knock on the door and returned to the dressing- 
table laden with a great bunch of lilies, breathing 
wistful perfume in the heat and glare of the dressing- 
room. 

“ Letters, miss — and these flowers ! ” she said ad- 
miringly. 

“ Oh ! ” said Beauty half indifferently, turning her 
head to sniff. “Who sent them? Give me the let- 
ters!” 

“ ‘ Mr. Chorley,* ” read Janet from the card. 
“ * With sincere admiration for the loveliest of Sav- 
ages ’ ! ” 

Beauty’s great hit in the piece of the moment was 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 21 1 


when she appeared on a desert island in a fringe of 
seaweed and grasses with a miniature tomahawk in 
her hand, and sang a song about her cannibal lover 
and his fascinations, supported by a chorus of girls 
in beads and deerskins. She was busy over her let- 
ters, but she turned her head half scornfully to look 
at the innocent flowers and the card of the man who 
was reported in the daily papers as the most brainy 
politician on the Government benches. 

“ I hate Members of Parliament,” said Beauty, 
with a shrug of her bare shoulders, from which the 
towel had slipped. “ They are all old before they 
are talked about, and they are not worth knowing 
until they are ! ” 

“ How about Lord Derringham? ” said Janet, with 
raised eyebrows. 

“Yes, but he’s a peer — he’d be worth going to 
supper with, anyhow,” said Beauty carelessly. “ Do 
hurry up, Janet ! I’m half naked, and the orchestra’s 
on.” 

Janet produced and shook out the delicate dress of 
imitation grasses with its brief skirt, and hooked 
Beauty into it. The girl’s legs were encased in flesh- 
ings as close as a second skin, and hardly discernible 
from it, and her neck and arms were so bare that it 
wanted very little imagination to slip her bust also 
out of the flimsy bodice. All of Beauty that the 
Censor allowed to the public was certainly shown. 
Janet fastened a great shell like a cap amongst the 
loose curls of her golden-brown hair, and slyly pulled 
out some of the lilies from Mr. Chorley’s bouquet 
and offered them to her young lady. 


212 THE CAREER OE BEAUTY DARLING 


“ They don’t grow on desert islands ! ” said Beauty 
disdainfully. “Am I ready, Janet? Dust that pow- 
der off my shoulder ! ” 

There came a sharp rap on the door. “ Miss Dar- 
ling, please ! ” said the call-boy crisply. Beauty 
opened the door and ran down the echoing stone 
stairs. 

Left alone, Janet of course read the letters that 
Beauty had left open on the table, some out of their 
envelopes. There was the usual selection — two in- 
vitations to dances (one given by the Sovereignty 
girls and one by a well-known milliner in Bond 
Street), a good deal of flattery and fervour, several 
offers of supper-parties and luncheons, and one busi- 
ness-like request for an acquaintance between the 
writer and Miss Darling. Even this suggested a 
table as the medium of introduction. Why is it that 
when woman attracts us our first fond desire is to 
feed her ? I have never been able to explain this 
satisfactorily from a man’s point of view, except 
under the beautiful theory that we wish to do unto 
others as we should like them to do unto us. 

Janet was not particularly interested in Beauty’s 
love-letters. She read them partly because she was 
idle and partly because all knowledge is liable to come 
in useful. She was by no means a spy of Allonby’s, 
but she was in his service as much as Beauty’s, be- 
cause he paid her wages. Janet knew all there was 
to know, and considerably more. Beauty never went 
away for week-ends unless there was a whole party; 
and if her Manager came down to see her at Chelsea, 
it was quite permissible. The affair had, in fact, 
rather fallen into a habit, and lacked all feverish 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 213 

urgency. If Beauty had shuddered at one time, she 
had schooled herself into passive acquiescence long 
since, and took her obligations prosaically. There 
are many wives who cannot say more, or less. 

What really interested Janet amongst the letters 
was one from Folly Bird, a Satyr girl whose ac- 
quaintance Beauty had made when she was first at 
Allonby’s. They had not then been intimate, but with 
the hothouse growth of stage friendships their re- 
lations had ripened violently since Beauty came more 
to the front The letter had been opened in a hurry 
and not thoroughly digested by Beauty, or — to do 
her justice — she would never have left it about to 
fall into other hands than her own. At the bottom 
of the first page was the sentence, “ I am afraid I shall 
have to leave the Satyr for a time, for ” — and Beauty 
had had no time to read further, but had run to catch 
her cue, simply speculating as to whether the other 
Musical Comedy houses had offered Folly a leg up. 
There was small chance of her getting into Allonby’s, 
for her voice was third rate, and she depended on a 
really beautiful figure for her position at the Satyr. 
Folly could always “fill three or four stalls,” as 
the saying went, by a personal display, and though 
her acting was a negligible quantity, she had risen 
to small parts — winked herself there, perhaps. Any- 
how, Beauty had no fears for her. But Janet had 
turned the page and read the next words — “I am 
in for it this time, and there’s no hope of an accident. 
I’ve got caught, after all these years, and just for a 
little harmless fling that you would think couldn't 
end in a slip! It’s all up with me if I lose my figure, 
so I’m going to look after myself, and no mistake. 


214 THE career of beauty darling 

I’m going to see an old friend of ours — a doctor 
(an Ai man in Manchester Square) — and ask him 
to take charge. I wish you’d come with me and help 
me over the ordeal. You’d be a real Darling if you 
would. I’m just dreading it. 

“ All the best. — From your old pal, Folly.” 

Most of the words were underlined or dashed, for 
Folly emphasized like all her world. Janet read 
greedily, for she was a born newsmonger, and all her 
little gaslit world knew Folly Bird of the Satyr. She 
wished she knew who the man was, but Folly had had 
that much discretion and there was no hint, and 
scandal had coupled her name with so many men that 
the father of her child might have been a syndicate 
to the Dresser’s lack of charity. She had read Folly’s 
letter last, and had only time to thrust it back into its 
envelope and turn to her work of setting to rights be- 
fore Beauty came flying back to the dressing-room, 
still singing a stave of her successful song in her fresh 
young voice : 

“I’m half afraid of Hannibal — 

My own sweet Cannibal! 

He swears he’ll eat me up some day with kisses — kisses — 
kisses ! ” 

“ Now, Janet, hurry! ” she said impatiently, sweep- 
ing aside a heap of white silk and flinging herself 
down in its place to tear off her stage moccasins. 
“ That ball scene dress is such a beast to get into. 
— Damn! There’s another knock at the door. Tell 
them to go to hell, there’s a good girl ! ” 

“ It’s Mr. Allonby, miss!” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 215 

“ Oh ! ” sa,id Beauty, snatching up the silk wrapper 
which had fallen on the floor and covering her warm 
white arms and bosom with instant decency. “ Come 
in! Did you want to speak to me, Mr. Allonby? ” 

“ Yes ; can you spare me a moment now, or will you 
come to my room after the show? ” 

“ I’m rather late — they’re cutting the orchestra to- 
night, and the ball scene was half set as I came through 
at the back — ” 

“ I’ll go down and see if I can get some more hot 
water, miss!” Janet broke in discreetly. “ It won’t 
take a minute to hook you up.” 

As the door closed behind her Allonby sat down 
heavily in the chair before the looking-glass and smiled. 
The threefold mirrors showed his sallow, hairless face, 
and the thick rolls of flesh under the jaw, into which 
his collar cut with merciless distinctness. “ Janet’s 
a good girl,” he said. “ I wanted to see you alone, 
Beauty, and I can’t get down to Chelsea to-morrow.” 

“ What is it, Eddy ? ” She came and leant against 
his chair, because from that position she could not 
see his image in the glass, and it somehow offended her. 
She stretched her arm across his shoulders, and it 
seemed an endless width to that slim reach, the delicate 
inside curve of the elbow- joint looking almost trans- 
parent against the solid black cloth. Fortunately she 
had not yet whitened her arms for the ball scene. 

“ It’s about Urgmont’s offer, dear. He wants a girl 
to play a small character part in his new piece, and he 
suggested you. I don’t know that I won’t send you 
there just to try it.” 

“ Eddy ! At the Phoenix ! ” For this was legiti- 


216 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


mate Comedy, and a well-known House, and Beauty 
had never aspired above Musical Comedy. 

“ Yes; it would give you another chance — see what 
you’re made of ! ” He pinched the small ear beneath 
Beauty’s curls. “ You would play ‘ by kind permis- 
sion,’ of course; but if you did well I don’t know that 
I wouldn’t put some money into a new Comedy vent- 
ure. I don’t mean you to get out of my hands — 
you needn’t be afraid of that.” He laughed again, 
but Beauty could do nothing but stare at him and 
gasp. “ Come to my room and discuss it later,” he 
said. 

“ Oh, Eddy! I’m afraid I can’t. I was going out 
to supper to-night — ” 

He turned shortly at the door, as he was about to 
leave her. “ Who is it ? ” he said in a different tone. 
“ You’ve been out before this week — ” 

“ No, that I haven’t ! ” She was a trifle indignant. 
“ Most of the others have, but not me. It’s only 
Bartig and Lawless and Cuthy Noble, and two other 
girls besides myself.” 

“Well!” He still seemed a little upset, and his 
eyes fell on the flowers. “ I suppose one of these 
young fools sent them ? ” 

“ No — Mr. Chorley. I met him at Mona Morley’s 
last week — he’s a fool! ” said Beauty calmly of Eng- 
land’s most polished speaker. 

“ He’ll be a Cabinet Minister before long, anyhow,” 
said Allonby, laughing again. “ Don’t snub him — 
he might be useful to you some day. Always keep 
powerful friends, Beauty. I’m sorry you’re going out 
with these brainless asses, but I suppose it can’t be 
helped now.” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 217 

“ I don’t often go, and I’ve been asked so many 
times. If I’d known you wanted me about this 
job—” 

“ It’s all right, child. I’ll come down and have a 
long talk with you on Friday. Don’t sit up till day- 
light, and go home with the girls, that’s all. If you 
must go to supper-parties, you would be wiser to go 
with a man like Chorley. He’s an advertisement in 
himself.” 

“ He’s so dull ” — she had nearly added “ and old,” 
but stopped herself in time. Youth did seem very 
desirable from the prick of the red blood in her own 
veins, and she felt sometimes that she must have her 
fling like the others, and throw prudence aside. Beauty 
did not underestimate the advantages to be gained 
from keeping to elderly men, for in her experience they 
mostly meant the obvious good things in which her 
soul revelled, and in which she indulged to satiety since 
Allonby allowed her to do so. There was too much 
scent in the dressing-room, too many toilet aids, too 
great an array of peignoirs and slippers and jewellery 
sent her by admirers in ambush for her favour. But 
the Musical Comedy Star has established a right for 
herself to accept jewellery and give nothing in return, 
unless the giver is shrewd enough to drive a hard bar- 
gain first. In those circumstances Beauty reluctantly 
abandoned the pretty things offered her; otherwise 
she took them as her due, though noting again that 
they generally came from the middle-aged. 

Nevertheless she wanted sometimes to be young and 
irresponsible with Youth and Irresponsibility, to be 
boisterously merry and noisy, and to behave according 
to her upbringing. It was a relief to-night to get 


218 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


away from a serious talk over her career with Allonby, 
and to go to the supper-party at the Savoy, where the 
three young men and two other girls awaited her — 
Barbara Sinclair (long since Mrs. Jack Simpson and 
a divorcee) and Cherry Bough, friends of her younger 
days, and Lord Robert Bartig, the Hon. Ivor Lawless, 
and Captain Noble of the Life Guards. Nobody was 
over thirty, and the night was a merry one. When 
Beauty reached the hotel she found that her party 
had already assembled in the lounge, for the other 
girls got of! earlier than she could do, and Captain 
Noble had come out to the glass doors to await her. 
He was the eldest of the party, being quite twenty- 
nine and qualified to keep order. Moreover, he was 
host, and Beauty Darling sat at his left hand in the 
place of honour, though Mrs. Simpson was the chap- 
eron. 

“ Am I late ? ” she called gaily, as she put her hand 
on his arm and jumped out of the cab. “ I suppose 
every one is cursing me, but the show is so long. Mr. 
Allonby ought to cut that second act — I’ve told him 
so.” 

Captain Noble looked down into the wonderful little 
face, lifted fearlessly to the electric lamps, and his 
languid manner quickened a little. There was not a 
trace of grease-paint on Beauty’s soft skin, but the 
lashes shading her deep eyes were still a little black- 
ened, and the carelessness somehow added piquancy 
to a loveliness that had no trace of tire, though it was 
nearly midnight and she had had a long night of hard 
work. 

“ You are not very late,” he said. “ And even if 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 219 

you had been we should have been content to wait.” 

“ You better speak for yourself,” said Beauty, with 
the high laugh of racing spirits. “ I expect the girls 
are famished.” She entered the grand hall with him, 
and shook hands with the rest of the group, Lord 
Robert Bartig immediately beginning to chaff her 
about hoping to enhance her value by keeping them all 
waiting. 

“ Come on, and don’t rag — I want my food ! ” said 
Cherry Bough, putting her hand on his shoulder and 
pushing him familiarly in the direction of the supper- 
room. The others followed, Noble drawing Beauty’s 
hand through his arm to lead her to the table reserved 
for them. There was a little conscious sense of their 
entrance as they came in — heads turned to watch them 
pass, an obvious question from some one who was not 
a habitue of the supper-room — that was as pleasant 
to Beauty as the roar of applause at the end of her 
songs. She leaned her elbows on the table and 
her chin in her hands for a moment, looking round her 
with her pencilled eyes, and perhaps it was to her as 
typical a success as any other in her career, though it 
seemed so much less important. But to be young and 
beautiful and looked at, even by the passing world, 
was life at its best to Beauty Darling. Even the 
homage of Cuthbert Noble’s obvious infatuation could 
only add a little to the fundamental pleasure. 

“ Pretty full, isn’t it ? ” said Beauty, turning to Lord 
Robert on her left, already deep in the mysteries of 
hot lobster and fresh toast; it is a great thing to be 
twenty-three. Their own table was near the windows, 
but the body of the room was scattered with guests, 


220 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


the half world and the whole world mingling indiffer- 
ently. “ Who’s that having supper with old Everton 
Toffee?” 

“ That’s my sister-in-law, Lady Maidenbridge,” he 
replied with a cheerful grin. “ She’s making the run- 
ning with old Toffee — but she’s deuced proper nowa- 
days.” 

“Wasn’t she on the stage?” asked Cherry, filling 
her mouth with light pastry and cunningly prepared 
champignons — Noble had ordered a special supper. 

“ Why, you silly, she was Connie Taylor of Allon- 
by’s years ago, when I was in the children’s play at 
the Sovereignty ! ” said Mrs. Simpson. “ I bet Connie 
knows a thing or two still, Bobbie ! ” 

“ Not she ! ” said the boy solemnly. “ She’s the 
most innocent thing on earth — she knows nothing! 
There never was such a respectable woman as my 
sister-in-law. Maidenbridge calls her Constance, and 
she never goes about without him in tow. He’s there 
now, with his back to us, by the pillar.” 

“ Go over and ask them to join our party — do ! ” 

“ Not for Joe! She don’t know I’m within a hun- 
dred miles of her for all the notice she’ll take — you 
bet!” 

“ That’s what comes of marrying one of us — we 
always reform our hubbies,” said Mrs. Simpson cyni- 
cally. “ Go to the stage if you want a straight-living 
wife. It was just because Jack couldn’t stick it that we 
parted.” 

Lady Maidenbridge was indeed ignoring her brother- 
in-law and his friends with an unconsciousness that 
did credit to her histrionic talents. Lord Maiden- 
bridge, a young man with a weak mouth and eye- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 221 


glasses, was really oblivious of their presence, but old 
General Toff’s wicked brown eyes were alive in their 
network of wrinkles, and were scrutinizing the girls 
as he might have done blood-stock at Doncaster. He 
knew the points of a horse or a woman, and made Mrs. 
Simpson laugh as she returned his glances. 

“ The old sinner ! ” she said. “ He used to have 
a box for the season when Edna Carruthers was on, 
years ago” (it was only six); “ and one night she 
had a new song about the schoolboys and the sweet- 
shops — that was in ‘ The London Girl/ you remem- 
ber, Cherry? — and at the end of the first verse she 
looked up at him and sang: 

“‘As sweet — as sweet — as sweet as Everton Toffy!' 

The house simply roared/ , 

“ Improper old Johnnie ! Lady Maidenbridge is too 
particular for him — he’d like to come over here,” 
said Ivor Lawless. The point of his remark was 
greeted with renewed laughter and no objection, and 
Cherry Bough made eyes across her champagne-glass 
at old Sir Everton, held in solemn bondage beside 
Lady Maidenbridge, whose acquired propriety he found 
very dull. 

Beauty Darling had not taken much part in the 
conversation beyond an occasional sentence. She was 
in a state of dreamy content, and her eyes smiled while 
her lips were too busy with her supper to do so. 
The food and the wine had refreshed her sufficiently 
to make her feel happy in her tire (it had been a 
Matinee day), and she liked to know that every man 
in the room was looking at her, covertly or openly. 
She was getting well known at the Savoy, and had her 


222 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


favourite table and her pet items on the carte. More- 
over, she was enjoying her pleasures with the perfect 
appetite of youth — the lights and the luxury and the 
sense of admiration that followed her as she moved. 
Noble had slipped his hand over hers under the table 
once or twice and held it strongly. She liked that, 
too, and the warm youth and strength in his clasp. 

“ I wonder where old Toffee expects to hop off to 
when he dies ? ” Lawless was saying reprovingly. 
“ He ought to be thinking of his latter end and not re- 
turning Miss Bough’s glances.” 

“That’s all rot nowadays,” said Lord Robert,. with 
the wisdom of his twenty-three years lived out since 
the eighties. “ Even an old Johnnie like Toff has 
come to the conclusion that hell’s a bogy.” 

“Tch! tch! There are ladies present! Of course 
there is no such place for them. What do you think, 
Miss Darling? You’re very quiet.” 

A half-conscious memory was awakened in Beauty’s 
mind from the connexion of the words. “ I think it 
would be a pity to do away with hell altogether,” she 
said. “ Men need such a lot of damnation held over 
them to keep them straight ! ” 

There was such an uproar of laughter that two or 
three men turned round stealthily from other tables 
and longed for the joke. Beauty joined the hilarity 
herself, and met the amused admiration in Noble’s 
dark eyes without a pin-prick of conscience. It was 
not the first time she had quoted her foster-mother 
and taken the credit of a grim wisdom. Her brain 
was really of the reproductive order. 

“ That reminds me of old Nolly the other night,” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 223 

said Mrs Simpson. “ He was slanging everybody for 
some muddle with the limes, and he told them all that 
if God made them he’d like to return them as low- 
class work that was only fit for the devil’s service. 
Giddy Goat nearly rolled over in the wings, he was so 
fetched.” 

“ Is Giddy goin’ on with you ? I heard he’d started 
a show of his own,” said Lord Robert. 

“ Next autumn or winter — his contract with Nolly 
is up then,” said Cherry Bough. “ I’m going with him, 
if he’ll give me terms.” 

“ Are you? ” Mrs. Simpson seemed surprised. “ I 
wouldn’t trust his Management for a good run. When 
he’s settled, in a year or so, will be time enough for 
me to make a change.” 

The talk became generally theatrical, for two leading 
reasons — those who are on the Stage can talk of 
nothing but the Stage for very long, so the girls natu- 
rally drifted off to their own subject; while the men 
were young enough to feel a secret triumph in their 
familiarity with the world behind the scenes, and talked 
with even more fluency than their companions of 
Flossie Farmer fluffing in her scene with Lloyd War- 
render, and how Lord Theodore de Valence was finan- 
cing the new venture at the Phoenix, and Dotty Sharpe 
was going to marry Rochester and leave the boards 
— for the present. It was Beauty who threw a bomb- 
shell into the conversation by a remark about her own 
future that struck everybody dumb. 

“ Well, as far as I know I’m done with Allonby’s 
for a while after ‘ The Nobodies ’ is taken off. I’m 
going to try Comedy for a bit.” 


224 THE career of beauty darling 

The three men stared at her to see if it were a joke, 
but the beautiful little face was perfectly grave — not 
a dimple lingering to betray a hoax. 

“ Beau-ty ! ” said Cherry Bough at last. “ Are you 
really? What’s Allonby going to say to that? ” 

“ Oh, I’m signed on to him, of course; I can’t go 
without his permission, but he’ll let me all right. I 
expect to be at the Phoenix next year.” 

There was another silence. The girls wondered 
what had spurred Beauty on to this ambition, and 
shrewdly suspected that Edgar Allonby was not going 
to do anything more for her, and that she was taking 
a high flight on her own account. They did not think 
it could be successful, and were inclined to be sorry 
for her. That Allonby was really the instigator of 
such a change they did not guess, for Beauty had 
been cautious at least in only mentioning him as prob- 
ably willing — if she had not been drinking cham- 
pagne she would never have mentioned the subject 
at all. The men, on their side, felt an equal incredul- 
ity, partly because they had grown accustomed to think 
of Beauty’s claim to success on the Stage as resting 
solely on her face and voice. Certainly she had never 
shown more histrionic talent than the singing of. catchy 
tunes with her eyes upturned to the gallery. One 
man at least thought of her accent, and felt half piti- 
ful, half contemptuous. It was not very much — 
not aggressively Cockney — but it was there, and it 
did not lend itself to legitimate Comedy. Beauty Dar- 
ling off the Musical Comedy stage seemed an anachron- 
ism. 

“ I didn’t know you were so ambitious, Miss Dar- 
ling,” said Noble with a smile at last. “ But I’m sure 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 225 

we all wish you success. Come ! Let’s drink to Miss 
Darling as the future Lady Teazle ! ” 

Beauty did not for the moment remember that char- 
acter, though her school training had taught her to 
read Sheridan amongst other classics. She was quick 
enough not to give it away. “ Oh, I have my am- 
bitions ! ” she said as she raised her own glass. “ I 
have two friends who are always preaching a career to 
me and don’t let me forget it.” 

This was true, for Dr. Hardinge still wrote to the 
waif he had rescued, and though she seldom saw 
Michael Phayre, he was, as he had told her, still her 
friend. The years had done something for Michael 
too, though so slowly that he hardly realized when 
the change had come about. It was not much, hardly 
an acknowledgment of conscientious work, performed 
under drawbacks of environment and insufficient 
nourishment; still, a few people were beginning to 
recognize a drawing as “ a Phayre ” and to pick out 
his few pictures on exhibition at art galleries. Michael 
was still a personality in the background of Beauty’s 
mind, though she hardly knew it, and was much more 
taken up with the passing faces in the foreground of 
her life — Cuthbert Noble’s at the present moment. 
There was a certain attraction about Captain Noble 
in that he had been half engaged, or on the verge of 
an engagement, to a girl in his own world, so rumour 
said, but had followed the lure of two dark-blue eyes 
across the footlights and forgotten her. Beauty felt 
a little pleasurable excitement in his society, and he 
flattered her vanity — above all he was young , and the 
grip of his hand or a more ardent glance from his 
eyes thrilled her with a pleasure very different to her 


226 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


relations with Allonby. She knew quite well that he 
was infatuated, though whether it would lead him as 
far as marriage she had no grounds to say. He was 
well born and in an expensive regiment, without a 
large income to make marriage with one of Allonby ’s 
girls a very possible thing. Still, she liked him, and 
his passion for her was keen and unsatisfied. If 
Beauty had been Cherry Bough or Barbara Sinclair 
there would have been far more chance of it ending 
in matrimony. 

Later that night, or rather morning, he drove her 
home to Chelsea in the little motor-brougham which 
would only hold two, and which, therefore, obviously 
made it impossible for her to “ go home with the 
other girls ” as Allonby had told her to do. And be- 
cause Beauty’s head was tired it fell very naturally 
upon his shoulder, and she lay in his arms, half asleep, 
half pleasantly conscious of his virile manhood and his 
whispered love-making. The safe darkness of the 
brougham and the wine he had drunk were not the 
safest conditions for either of them — but as the car- 
riage slowed down to a soft whir and stopped at the 
respectable door, he caught a glimpse of her face in 
the first streak of dawn, and it was like a tired child’s. 
He had taken the latch-key from her, and had had 
some mad purpose of going into the house, when he 
saw that she was half asleep already* He took the 
little soft figure up in his arms for a moment and 
held her crushed against his heart with his hot face 
buried in her scented hair — but her face was the 
face of a tired child, and something better in him 
made the suggestion on his lips die away unuttered. 

The embrace had waked Beauty. She yawned 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 227 

sleepily when he lifted her out on to the pavement, 
and running up to the door, she let herself in with a 
backward nod for good night. She was too tired to 
ask him to come in and have a cigarette, she decided, 
but she wondered a little why he had not taken the 
trouble to accompany her as far as the door ! — 


CHAPTER X 


44 A NOTHER telegram for Miss Vansagnew, 
please.” 

“ Is it for me, or for my sister, Tommy? You 
brought me one of hers last time ! ” 

“ Miss Mildred Vansagnew ! ” insisted the call-boy, 
thrusting the envelope through the half-opened door 
into the Dresser’s hand. 

Mildrew Vansagnew opened and read it hurriedly, 
and then stuck it up over the glass with several others 
that she had already received. The dressing-rooms at 
the Phoenix were narrow and old-fashioned, and only 
two ladies were dressing in this besides Mildred, but 
over each glass was the same array of congratulatory 
telegrams, or wishing “ good luck ” from absent friends 
for the first night of the new Comedy. They were 
flanked by humorous pincushions in the shape of dolls, 
or toys, or fancy mascots of all kinds, for actresses are 
very much alike in this, be they Musical Comedy or 
Legitimate Drama. 

“ That makes the round dozen to me. How many 
have you, Mrs. Germaine?” 

“ Sixteen ! ” 

“ Ah ! you always beat us all ! And you. Miss Dar- 
ling?” 

“ The same as you — twelve.” 

Beauty Darling was dressing at the end of the long 
228 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 229 

table that ran all down one side of the room, and over 
her triple looking-glass were ranged the pallid slips 
of paper, looking as anaemic as only telegrams can. 
Beneath them were a selection of her Beasts, for she 
had too many to bring to her restricted quarters at 
the Phoenix; but there was something forlorn in the 
appearance of Cuddle-Puddles, the sky-blue cat with 
the long neck, and Doggie-Babs, the apricot dog, who 
had pure colic to judge from his expression. Their 
only companions were the bird that screwed his head 
in all directions and a donkey sitting on his haunches 
with his forelegs resting on his thighs. Beauty felt 
forlorn, too, though she would not own to it. It 
seemed so strange to be in a dressing-room with only 
two other people, and those two in a superior position 
to herself. She had known what it was to be amongst 
ten or twenty girls of her own age, giggling, shouting, 
playing the fool, and even swearing at each other; 
and she had known what it was to have her dressing- 
room to herself and to be a coming “ star ” in Musical 
Comedy at any rate. But here — here she was no- 
body! Or rather she was Beauty Darling of Allon- 
by’s, raised into the ranks of real Comedy, and unde- 
niably going up in her profession as she retrogressed 
in individual importance. Beauty did not like being 
nobody ; she longed even for the dear noisy days when 
the Lilliput Troupe kept No. 6 dressing-room lively. 
At any rate she had been one of them, and a good 
deal prettier than any! Here, in the Phoenix, she 
was an outsider, and prettiness did not count so much 
as acting. Art was the thing to aim at, and Beauty 
became bewildered with the new standard where 
nobody cared at all whether half a dozen men would 


230 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

come night after night to look at you, but if you had 
“carried the House ” even for a few minutes, you 
were a person to be respected — an Actress in earnest 
over her Profession! 

It all seemed very strange. Beauty knew what it 
was to give “ a rotten show,” and to “ get the bird ” 
from the gallery, if a girl were not word-perfect and 
could not look a picture in the limes or make the points 
of her songs; but the importance given to entrances 
and exits, to getting over the footlights and to “ tones ” 
was beyond her comprehension. Grand finales were 
timed, and people had their places in Musical Comedy, 
and woe betide them if they threw anybody out when 
Syddie Hughes was bucketing his Company! — but 
the rehearsals at the Phoenix were like a difficult game 
of chess, where one person’s steps were counted to 
allow another time to turn in profile to the audience, 
and the next tense sentence to be given on the nail 
with the utmost effect of words and movement. Even 
the Stage-Manager recognized a desire to work equal 
to his own, and forbore to be very rude. 

“ They make a damned fuss over nothing! ” she told 
Folly Bird in confidence, for Folly being out of it for 
the present was a fit recipient of private grievances. 
Nemesis had overtaken Folly Bird, and she was re- 
ported as “ resting ” ! The birth of her child had 
robbed the mother even of the poor virtue of working 
for it, and she would have been in bitter plight if 
Beauty Darling had not been drawing a good salary 
and come to her assistance. For Beauty with the 
true theatrical charity was working for two, and came 
and detailed her experiences to Folly. “ Mr. Pope 
was nearly blind with a cold at rehearsal ! ” she said, 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 231 

“ and instead of having a hot gin and gagging his 
part, he went about looking like a teapot in a fit and 
apologizing to the S. M. I’m fed up with politeness 
nowadays ! ” 

It even seemed odd to Beauty that no one knew 
about her Beasts, and that Mrs. Germaine said, “ What 
a lot of funny china figures you have, Miss Darling! 
I never saw such cats and dogs. Do look, Mildred, 
they are absolute nightmares ! ” — for Mrs. Germaine 
and Mildred Vansagnew were on terms of an old in- 
timacy, and Mrs. Germaine called the girl by her 
Christian name ; but Mildred did not call her “ Germy ” 
in return, as would inevitably have happened at the 
Satyr or Allonby’s, and they both treated Miss Darling 
with a quiet courtesy that somehow held her at arm’s 
distance beyond the familiarity of Christian names or 
nicknames. The men were not so aloof, it is true. 
After a few rehearsals Beauty found that her face did 
its usual work. There was always somebody ready 
to talk to her in the wings; and once when she had 
met the lead, Arthur Curtiss, on the stairs, he had 
stopped to joke with her for a few minutes, and before 
she could get away she had found his arm around her 
waist and he had kissed her. Men are very much 
alike whatever their circumstances, Beauty thought. 
But these were London men and members of the Green 
Room Club, and the atmosphere about them was alien, 
even though the old Adam occasionally peered through. 
Furthermore, Beauty resented the fact, which she was 
quick enough to guess, that they would not have tried 
to kiss Mildred Vansagnew on the stairs, let alone 
her more famous sister, Daphne, who was so much the 
leading lady that she was hedged in by the glamour 


232 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

of her position and had hardly come in contact with 
Beauty Darling except in the scenes where they played 
together. 

Beauty’s part in the new piece was a small one, but 
effective. She was a ragged girl who sang at the kerb 
in a well-known London street, and was instrumental 
in unravelling the complications of the plot. It was 
a little character part, and was likely to make a hit 
if properly handled. Beauty had not been nervous at 
rehearsal; her voice was good, and she had no diffi- 
culty in exaggerating, though she might have done of 
eradicating, her accent. She was not in the least aware 
that her pronunciation was not as pure as Miss Vans- 
agnew’s, however, and accepted the producer’s ap- 
proval of her Cockney twang as a tribute to her clever- 
ness in imitating the girls she had heard in the streets 
at Peckham. What she did not like was the dis- 
covery that her make-up must be a very different thing 
to what it had been at Allonby’s. 

She had played a flower-seller in Musical Comedy 
— a flower-seller with a pink and white face and little 
bare white feet below the picturesque rags, and a bare 
head to show her sunny curls. But at the Phoenix 
they wanted reality, not pretty make-believe. Beauty 
appeared at the dress-rehearsal with her curls loose 
about her small fair face, and despite the hideous 
smashed hat she wore under protest she was still the 
Allonby girl incongruously introduced into Legitimate 
Drama. Then the Stage-Manager swore softly, and 
the Producer told her curtly and at once that she was 
not looking the part. Beauty pouted and argued, and 
finally lost her temper, saying things on the stairs to 
the dressing-room that could be heard on the stage, 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 233 

and were quite suited to the Satyr, but unknown to 
the Phoenix. She knew what she had done five min- 
utes later, and cried stormily, furious with herself for 
putting herself at such a disadvantage, and furious 
with the Management for having been the cause of 
it. But it was all no good to her. The Stage-Man- 
ager took her in hand, and insisted on the curls being 
screwed into a tight wad at the nape of her neck, 
and the pink and white face being altered to one that 
suggested hunger and misery. Even then the girl was 
pretty, triumphantly pretty, despite false lines and 
pallid colouring. The lovely mould of brow and jaw, 
and the delicate features, would have saved the face 
something of beauty even though it had been marked 
with smallpox, to say nothing of her sweet blue eyes. 
But she could not see it, and only knew that she had 
been made ill-looking and unattractive, and was shorn 
of the glory of her usual attributes. The Stage, to 
Beauty, meant a place where a complexion was touched 
up to the ideal of a doll, and hair was spread out to its 
utmost advantage, and eyes were blackened to increase 
their size. She knew no more of art than a little pig. 

The absence of her usual weapons of attraction made 
her frightened, and as she stood before the glass on 
this first night of the piece, she was losing her con- 
fidence. The ragged dirty figure and pinched face 
did not seem to belong to her, and she could not im- 
agine laying, siege to public favour and winning it in 
such a guise. Something of what was in her mind 
seemed to reach Mildred Vansagnew in an occult fash- 
ion, for she turned from her own glass to speak her 
congratulations with intuitive kindness. 

“ Oh, Miss Darling! What a wonderful make-up! 


234 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

Do look, Mrs. Germaine; isn’t it exactly right for 
‘ Peggy ! ’ Mr. Thelma (the author) will be pleased. 
He is awfully keen on that character.” 

“ Yes, certainly,” said Mrs. Germaine, turning to 
look also. She was an elderly woman who played 
elderly parts, and played them very well, and she had 
a certain dignity and carriage that extinguished all 
Beauty’s acquired assurance. “ That is much better 
than at the dress rehearsal ! ” 

“ Oh ! but one never gets a make-up right at dress- 
rehearsal,” said Mildred hastily, scenting danger. “ I 
was far too red; Mr. Thelma had to tell me so, but 
I didn’t grasp the fact that he meant me to be 
anaemic ! ” she added, laughing. “ Can’t you feel a 
part more when you’re really like it, Miss Darling? 
I can! And you have a clean face in your second 
scene, you know,” she added, with a quick understand- 
ing of Beauty’s rebellious mind. 

“ I think it’s a burlesque make-up,” said Beauty 
sulkily. “ But if Mr. Thelma likes that kind of thing, 
I suppose no one else counts.” 

Mildred sank into dismayed silence, with a brief 
glance at Mrs. Germaine, who raised her brows. 
Could not the girl see that at dress-rehearsal she had 
been the simpering picture on a sweetmeat-box, and 
that now she was “ Peggy ” ! Beauty could not see 
it, however, because she had never grasped the charac- 
ter of Peggy. She played it like a parrot, taking 
tones and movements from the Producer, and with a 
certain facility born of her years of training. She 
did not play it badly, because it came easily to her to 
imitate a lower-class girl — she had lived amongst 
them, and almost thought like them for most of her 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 235 

life; but she could play that one part and no other 
in real Comedy, unless she developed unlooked-for 
talent during the run, as the Stage-Manager had al- 
ready shrewdly decided. Her voice was her strongest 
bid for favour. Clear and pure and sound, it struck 
a hush through the House when she first opened her 
lips at the imitation kerbstone, despite the fact that 
it had an unusual tremolo. She was horribly nervous, 
but the tremor was, if anything, rather effective, and 
gave the impression of a girl faint with hunger instead 
of strong and in good voice. How she got through 
the rest of the part she did not know; she heard a 
voice speaking her lines with the required accent, and 
she supposed that she took and gave the right cues; 
but for the first time in her life she experienced real 
stage fright, and she felt like a half-delirious creature 
under physical torture. At one moment it seemed 
to her that she could not go back on the stage even 
when her entrance came, and the next that she had 
gone on almost too soon, and could never get off it 
again. She felt disgraced and humiliated, and was 
thankful that none of her friends were in front owing 
to their own performances. For she had meant it to 
be so different — she had fancied herself as making 
quite a hit in her small part, and being spoken of in 
the Press as finding her own sphere — too good an 
actress for mere Musical Comedy, etc. She had given 
herself airs a little for being in Legitimate Drama, 
and had been quite sure that she was equal to carrying 
the House with her. Was she not used to the round 
of applause that greeted her tripping on to the stage 
with a strong limelight to show how flawless the face 
and how much on view the figure ! Ah, but then the 


236 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

public saw her as she really was, only a little inten- 
sified and made the most of — bright curls, red lips, 
pink cheeks, and a goodly display of ankles. No won- 
der they rose at her and shouted her name — “ Beauty ! 
Beauty Darling ! ” Poor Beauty was inclined to put 
the whole blame of her failure on the ugly make-up 
that had made her “ Peggy ” and no longer Beauty 
Darling. 

She did not know how she got off once her last line 
was said. She felt the Stage-Manager pat her shoul- 
der and say, “Very good! — you mustn’t be nervous 
— you’ll get over that by to-morrow night.” But she 
rushed away from him, upstairs to the empty dressing- 
room, and sobbed her heart out with her face buried 
in the long smart coat in which she came and went 
to and from the theatre, heedless of staining its deli- 
cate fawn colour. She was free early in the evening, 
for she had nothing to do in the last act, and Janet 
had gone out for refreshments, not expecting to be 
wanted just then. Beauty got rid of her make-up 
with shaking fingers, and shook down her hair round 
her white, tear-stained face. It was a warm night, 
and she had only a lace scarf to twist over her head, 
which she regretted, as she would have been glad of 
the shade of a hat-brim. But secure in the fact that 
no one was likely to be about, she opened the dressing- 
room door and made a bolt for it. 

The stage-doorkeeper was arguing with a tall man 
in an overcoat, who was either trying to come in or 
to send a note, and it was strictly against the rules for 
anyone to be allowed “ behind ” • on a first night. 
Beauty tried to brush past him, but the stage-door- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 237 

keeper said, “ Why, there is Miss Darling, sir ! ” and 
before she had gone a yard she heard a step beside 
her, and then she was looking up into Michael Phayre’s 
strained, tender eyes. 

“ Why, Beauty ! ” he said quietly, drawing her hand 
through his arm, “ I came to see if I might walk part 
of the way home with you, or cab it, if you like, and 
that Cerberus of yours was nearly fetching the police 
to stop my persistence! I knew you were off early, 
and I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the 
play, and liked you in it. I wish you could see your- 
self! You don’t know how pathetic you were. I 
wanted to pick you up and carry you off to the nearest 
cookshop and give you a meal, you poor little mite! 
A woman near me was crying over you — I nearly 
cried too ! ” 

He was talking on in his kindly, merry voice that 
somehow carried comfort with it, giving her time to 
recover a little. Beauty had not seen Michael Phayre 
for many months, and then it had been only a chance 
encounter in the street; but he seemed suddenly the 
most dear and familiar figure in the world. She 
clasped her little hands round his arm, clinging to him, 
and spoke with a catch in her breath. 

“ How — how did you come to be in the theatre, 
Mr. Phayre?” 

She had never called him Michael, and never would 
have done unless he had asked her to marry him, as 
she once knew that he meant to do. She had called 
Captain Noble “ Cuthbert ” — more often “ Cuthy ” — 
in the first six weeks of their acquaintance, and even 
a man as old as Allonby became “ Eddy ” with their 


238 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

more intimate relations. But Michael Phayre was 
“ Mr. Phayre ” still, though they had shared poverty 
together, and he had risen up at her side now like an 
angel of pity. 

“ Why, I know Thelma — he’s a capital fellow. I 
meet him sometimes at the Yorick Club, where I get 
invitations from other men. And he asked me to 
come and see his new play and gave me a seat. I 
knew you were in it, you see, and I wanted to see you 
without your knowing and judge your performance for 
myself.” 

“ I was a failure, Mr. Phayre — a dead frost. I 
wonder they didn’t give me the bird ! ” 

“ Nonsense, Beauty. You were a little nervous, but 
you had the whole sympathy of the audience — you 
looked such a child ! Dry your eyes, dear — ‘ Sweetest 
eyes were ever seen ! ’ — and remember that you've got 
to-morrow night and all the other nights to get over 
your fright.” 

By his good gift of sympathetic insight Michael 
knew just how to comfort Beauty. He had never 
paid her compliments, beyond telling her that her 
beauty was an obligation to be good, and his praise 
had always had rather the guise of a sermon, at which 
she had wriggled uncomfortably ; but now that she was 
humiliated and stripped of all her small conceits, he 
gave her back her self-confidence a little by the mere 
reference to her eyes. Yes, there were still advantages 
left to her, as he meant her to feel. She might not 
be a success off hand, but she had time to recover the 
ground she had lost, and — and her eyes were the 
sweetest ever seen! She wiped the tears from her 
face quietly, and crossing the Strand with him, struck 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 239 

off down Villiers Street to the Embankment, the cool 
air from the river fanning her face and refreshing 
her. 

Michael did not talk much until they had gone some 
way west, and then he looked down at the girl’s white 
face and suggested driving the rest of the way. “ I 
am tiring you, and I want to have a quiet chat when we 
get home. It is quite early. Will you ask me into 
your rooms ? ” he said. 

“ Yes, of course; but they are down at Chelsea. 
Shan’t I be taking you out of your way, Mr. Phayre? ” 

“ I live at Chelsea, too, now,” said Michael serenely. 
“ I have left New Cross and come into your neighbour- 
hood again by chance. Here’s a cab, and we won’t 
walk a step further ! ” 

Beauty told him the address, and sat silent during 
the drive. When she got out at her door, however, 
she hesitated a minute. Perhaps her finer senses were 
unusually acute to-night, for something held her back 
from asking Michael Phayre into those rooms. . . . 
She turned half-round, to say she knew not what, and 
found him standing patiently beside her, looking at 
her with the same frank friendliness that he had al- 
ways given her. Then she opened the door and pre- 
ceded him into the dark hall without another word. 

Beauty’s rooms — bedroom and two sitting-rooms, 
one leading out of the other — were certainly a great 
improvement on the combined apartment at New 
Cross. There was another smaller bedroom on a 
higher floor for her maid Janet, but the landlady 
cooked for her, and did so very well. There were no 
other lodgers in the house, and she had the exclusive 
right of the bathroom. Michael followed her into the 


240 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

dining-room, where she switched on the electric lamp 
and showed him a comfortable, well-furnished room 
with a small table and low bookcases round the walls. 
There were two deep arm-chairs beside the fire-place, 
where a cheery little fire had been kept burning (for 
it was early autumn, though a warm night), and as 
by common consent they went over and took posses- 
sion of them, facing each other across the blaze. The 
electric light was becomingly shaded with red silk; 
Michael could see Beauty’s face more clearly by the 
light of the leaping fire. 

“ Well, Beauty,” he said, looking round him quietly, 
“ you have plenty of books ! ” 

She fidgeted for a moment, twisting one of her 
curls around her finger in a way that he knew well. 

“ Mr. Phayre,” she said slowly, “ I’m afraid if you 
knew — you wouldn’t approve ! ” 

“ Perhaps I do know, Beauty,” was his still quiet 
answer. “ At least I don’t suppose you would afford 
these rooms for yourself, even on the salary you are 
getting, would you ? ” 

She sat up with a little gasp, as if something were 
oppressing her, and looked at him with the innocent 
eyes of a child. 

“If you like — I could give it all up?” she said 
bravely, and with a child’s extreme simplicity in ig- 
noring complications and going straight to the main 
point. “ I could marry some one — I know I could. 
Would you like me to do that? ” 

Michael smiled at her as he might at a child, almost 
whimsically. “ And what about the ‘ some one ?’ ” 
he said. “ Do you care for him much more than for 
your present — circumstances? For that is the only 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 241 

reason that could really weigh with you, you 
know.” 

The “ some one ” in her mind had, of course, been 
Cuthbert Noble. He had actually come to the point 
of asking her to marry him, and Beauty, in a fit of 
perversity, had refused; but it had not put an end to 
the affair, and Beauty did not doubt that she could 
lure him back if she would, nor could she exactly say 
why she had not done so, since she half regretted let- 
ting the chance of marriage slip through her fingers. 
It was possibly because she never had a very consec- 
utive plan of action unless driven into it by urgent 
circumstances or the opinion of some one stronger 
than herself. Left to herself she would probably have 
gone on neglecting to take advantage of Noble’s in- 
fatuation, but she had no scruple in making use of it 
now, if Michael Phayre advised it. She did not un- 
derstand the subtle morality that would have found 
such a union more criminal than an illegal connexion, 
if there were no sanctifying it by the spirit of love. 
To Beauty it was immoral to live with a man without 
being married to him, whatever the circumstances, and 
she acknowledged this even while she found it con- 
venient to do it; but it was not immoral to induce a 
man to marry her for mere lust, knowing that she did 
not care for him, and that she was taking advantage 
of his lower nature. Thousands of girls think, and 
are taught by their Churches to think, like Beauty 
Darling. 

“ I’m not very keen on him,” she said with brutal 
frankness ; “ not nearly so keen as he is on me. He 
asked me to marry him once — he implored me ! — 
and I wouldn’t because I knew there would be an aw- 


242 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

ful row with his people. He was nearly engaged to 
a girl in society, and he chucked her just to run after 
me. He must be awfully gone, mustn’t he? ” There 
was a note of triumph in her voice, and she evidently 
thought that this would be a recommendation for such 
a marriage even to Michael. 

“ But, childie, you couldn’t care for him the more 
because he had treated another girl badly,” he said, 
with that half-pitiful smile in his eyes that he so often 
gave her. 

“ N-no,” Beauty admitted, looking across the hearth 
at him to take her cue. She could not bear disap- 
proval from anybody, but she really did not see why 
Michael raised an objection. “ But it shows how keen 
he is!” she repeated. “You should just have heard 
him — he was off his head that night when he proposed 
to me. He went down on his knees — he did really — 
and he begged and stormed and said he wanted to kill 
us both ! ” 

The melodramatic effect of the sentiment appealed 
to Beauty strongly, particularly when harmlessly re- 
peated by herself and without the violence and reality 
that had terrified her in Noble. Michael Phayre was 
still looking at her in that curious, half-regretful fash- 
ion of his. 

“And you don’t care for him? ” he said. 

“ Oh, well ! he’s the next heir to a baronetcy, and 
he’s quite a big pot, you know. Not much money; 
but he’s in the Guards, and he’s the real thing as to 
family.” 

“ Oh, Beauty ! ” — Michael really laughed, though 
ruefully, “ that is what Cherry Bough or Folly Bird 
would say — it’s not you. You’re just a little parrot, 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 243 

picking up the sentiments you hear round you, and 
not really meaning them.” 

“ Poor old Folly ! ” Beauty unconsciously slid off 
the subject she could not cope with. “ There’s not 
much chance just now for her to marry well. I’m 
afraid she’s done for herself.” 

“ What’s the matter ? ” His ready sympathy drew 
the truth from Beauty, though she lowered her voice. 

“ She got caught — some feller in a touring crowd 
she went out with. And he’s in Australia now, and 
I don’t suppose he’d make it all right even if he 
came home. That’s why I was so sick at — at fail- 
ing to-night, partly,” she added with apparent irrele- 
vance. 

“ Go on ; tell me why.” 

“Well; Folly’s in hospital, you see, and she’ll be 
* out ’ for some months anyway ; and then there’s the 
kid. I promised to help her, and I’m getting a good 
screw — if only I can keep the part! But I’m afraid 
I shall get my notice, and then Papa won’t be pleased, 
for he got me into the Phoenix.” 

“ They won’t give you your notice,” said Michael, 
leaning forward to take the cold little hands in his with 
a very kindly pressure. “ You were much better than 
you knew, and your voice was delightful. You will 
be able to help poor Folly, never fear. Stick to that 
and the work, and never mind about marrying a man 
you only care about on account of his prospects; it’s 
worth ten thousand marriages to be able to help our 
friends by our own strength. That’s the real Beauty 
Darling — the girl who is working for two and is most 
anxious not to fail on the other girl’s account.” 

“ Then you — you don’t mind — there’s all this, you 


244 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

know.” She glanced round the comfortable, well- 
furnished room, with its shaded lights and fire. 

Michael asked a question in his turn. He was no 
orthodox moralist, and most Christians would have 
been shocked at him — not Christ, but then Christ was 
not what we would call a Christian nowadays. 

44 Do you hate the obligation that goes with 4 all 
this ’ Beauty ? ” 

44 1 — don’t know.” 

44 Do you hate the man ? ” 

44 No — oh no. He is very kind — ” 

44 Then I think, unless you both honestly agree that 
it had better end, that it is a far more honest bargain 
than the marriage you talked about. You owe him 
something — ” 

44 Oh, yes, everything ! ” 

That would have told Phayre who it was, if he had 
not guessed before. 44 Then pay your debts — even in 
this way,” said Michael Phayre as he rose to go. 
44 But when the mortgage is all off the property, and 
you feel you stand clear again, you need have no hes- 
itation in putting it behind you and starting afresh. 
Good-night, my dear child — you seem a very dear 
child to me to-night! — try to sleep, and face your 
work with fresh courage to-morrow. I’m coming to 
see the play again at the end of the week.” 

44 I’m afraid it will be still a frost ! ” said Beauty de- 
spondently, but she went to bed as he advised and 
slept off her sense of failure like a tired child. Nor did 
she get her notice. The piece went better on the sec- 
ond night in all its component parts, and Beauty 
found that other people’s confidence increased hers. 
She was let off with 44 obviously nervous,” and 44 not 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 245 

seen to great advantage in her new role ” by the first- 
night critics, but after all her part was a small one, 
and had not greatly affected the play. Beauty had 
again exaggerated her own importance, and found 
that nobody thought much of her fit of stage- fright, 
especially as by the time the notices came out in the 
weekly papers she had much improved, and several of 
these sending their representatives on the second or 
third nights, she was pronounced “very charming in 
her impersonation of a London waif,” specially rec- 
ommended for her songs, and said to be possessed of 
a talent that had hitherto found no scope in Musical 
Comedy. 

Beauty could in fact play that one part, and gradu- 
ally made it her own, so that she was said to have 
“ created ” it, and other girls with treble her dramatic 
powers founded their rendering of the character on 
hers when they went out with it on tour. The pro- 
ducer of the play shrewdly surmised that he was ex- 
ceptionally lucky in getting the very best that was to be 
got out of Beauty Darling, and that if she attempted 
anything further she would fail hopelessly, unless some 
author wrote another part especially for her on the 
same lines. She was anxious to keep in real Comedy 
if she could, even after “ Jacob’s Ladder ” was finished, 
but there is nothing more difficult than for an actress 
of Musical Comedy to keep her feet in Legitimate 
Drama without real and startling talent, unless it be 
the even worse case of some one who has played good 
parts on tour trying to get into London. Beauty had 
often listened to a chorus of despair on this subject, 
and rather wondered; but she began to find out one 
reason why London work seems to remain in the hands 


246 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

of a little clique, and no storming of Agents’ or Man- 
agers’ offices will bring any result. 

Behind the scenes at the Phoenix there was a regu- 
lar bureau for the exchange of information, carried 
on in the dressing-rooms. Ladies with quite well- 
known names who happened to be out of an engage- 
ment came to tea on Matinee days, or to chat between 
the acts in the evening. They mostly went to Daphne 
Vansagnew’s dressing-room, but they would often 
come up afterwards to see Mildred, and Mrs. Ger- 
maine’s visitors were even more numerous. There 
Beauty, out of it in her corner, saw such well-known 
women as Miss Brampton (who was still one of the 
best dressed women on the stage, and came in a won- 
derful Paris frock that opened up new ambitions to 
Beauty), Sylvia D’Oyle (once a Satyr girl and now 
playing Shakespeare — with the Satyr accent!), May 
Burney, who was one of Lord Eger de Valence’s 
discoveries, and had played Lady Teazle in her ’teens, 
and others who came after their own show was 
over merely to gossip. Every item of news as 
to what plays were to be produced, who had the filling 
of the cast, what influence was the best to back you, 
passed from one to another in the dressing-room, 
and before any outsider could have heard of a forth- 
coming play through the medium of the Agencies or 
the “ Era,” it was practically in the hands of the 
London clique, who were already possessed of the ad- 
vantage of being known to Managers. Competition 
is keen on the stage. It was no wonder that a girl or 
a man remained in the provinces for years, while the 
old names reappeared again and again in the London 
bills. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 247 

“ Is there anything going, dear? Do you know of 
anything that would suit me?” Beauty heard again 
and again, and if Mrs. Germaine had heard anything, 
or Mildred Vansagnew had a vague rumour to be fol- 
lowed up, there was pretty sure to be a return of 
courtesy from the visitor — “ I heard to-day that Tor- 
rington is backing a play of Gurney’s, and it’s to be 
rehearsed in August. I should go and see him, Mil- 
dred — you’ve played in so many of Gurney’s things.” 

The same dissemination of news went on in the 
Green Room Club for the men, but the women, having 
no such medium, were obliged to use the dressing- 
room. And it was not at the Phoenix alone, but all 
round London in the better-class theatres that it was 
going on. At Allonby’s and the Satyr she had heard 
less of it, because those theatres kept the same names 
on their salary list for years, and one Musical Comedy 
is so like another that the same sort of parts might 
always be counted upon. But at the Phoenix a play 
would run for three or six months instead of two years, 
which shows the superiority of Musical Comedy over 
Legitimate Drama in its hold upon public affection; 
and after that there might be something of a totally 
different nature, and no chance for the girl who had 
scored a modest success in the supplanted play. It 
behoved her to go farther afield, to the Centurion, or 
Bingham’s, or the Roscius, where in its turn another 
play was soon “ coming off,” and there would be a 
change of type in the production. 

Beauty listened in a rather sulky silence to the gossip 
that went on, and kept her ears open for a hint that 
might be useful to her also. She resented being so 
much in the cold, and it seemed incongruous that all 


248 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

the laughter and chatter should centre round another 
girl and an elderly woman rather than herself. She 
had once or twice had Cherry Bough or Barbara Sin- 
clair (Mrs. Jack Simpson) to see her, but somehow 
she was out of touch with their immense hats and high- 
pitched voices in her new make-up and inartistic rags, 
and the quiet dressing-room seemed flooded with their 
alien atmosphere and flagrant prettiness. There was 
something too insistent in the Satyr girls’ attractions 
when seen in a confined space; it was all right across 
the footlights, but it seemed to hit you and hurt you 
in a room. Mildred Vansagnew, who was not even 
strictly pretty, became a refined type if only by force 
of contrast, but there was just the shade of difference 
between Beauty Darling and Mildred Vansagnew that 
there would have been between Mildred Vansagnew 
and Lady Jane Lawless, Ivor Lawless’s sister, had they 
been brought into comparison. 

Beauty came in for a share of criticism herself, 
though she did not know it. When she was called for 
her scenes and safely out of the dressing-room, Miss 
Brampton nodded towards the deserted dressing-table : 

“ That’s the chorus girl from Allonby’s, isn’t it ? 
She is rather good from the front.” Miss Brampton 
had seen the play after the first night. 

“ She had stage-fright when we opened,” said Mrs. 
Germaine. “ But she has steadily improved since. 
Yes, she plays rather well, but I doubt if she could 
do anything but ‘ Peggy ’ — she simply is ‘ Peggy ’ as 
far as her origin and outlook goes, I suppose. She 
has only to exaggerate her accent, and to give way to 
her own sentiments ! ” 

“ Stage-fright ! ” said Miss Brampton, raising her 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 249 

handsome brows. “ That is unheard of for an 
Allonby girl. She made a tremendous hit in that last 
piece with a song she sang. I wonder Allonby let her 
go.” 

“ He wants to get her out of Musical Comedy and 
into something better, I think,” put in Mildred. “ At 
least, she told me so. She seems to be a protegee of 
his. I have always heard that he is very good to his 
girls.” 

Miss Brampton and Mrs. Germaine exchanged 
glances. They had heard before that Beauty Darling 
was a protegee of Edgar Allonby ’s, and they had 
also heard why. But there was no need to instil such 
poison into Mildred’s mind. She was a frank, kind- 
hearted girl, and ready to make the best of Beauty 
despite their hopeless dissimilarity. 

“ Hasn’t she a good voice ? ” she said cordially. 
“ I never get tired of hearing her sing * Buy my Lav- 
ender.’ ” 

“ Yes, and she has been well trained,” Miss Bramp- 
ton admitted. 

“ She is extraordinarily pretty,” remarked Mrs. 
Germaine, which comment was sure sooner or later 
to be made on Beauty. “ Even I like to look at her 
when she slips out of her rags and her make-up, and 
stands there like a white-limbed child, brushing her 
hair, and I am very old and blasee with regard to 
looks. It is a pity she is so impossible.” 

“ Is she impossible ? ” said Miss Brampton, picking 
up the sky-blue cat which kept guard over Beauty’s 
make-up box, and turning it round in amazement. 
“ What a fearful looking thing ! Whatever makes 
her have those china nightmares ? ” 


250 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“ Oh, she has ever so many more at home — I 
think she collects them,” said Mrs. Germaine, in a 
resigned tone. “ We find her rather impossible, Mil- 
dred and I, but Mildred can tell you more than I can. 
You went to her rooms, didn’t you, Milly?” 

“Yes; Daphne and I both went. I don’t mean 
that — oh, well, you know, Miss Brampton, I think 
it’s manner more than anything else — and it sounds 
so uncharitable to say it. But I simply can't take 
her home to my people and introduce her to mother ! ” 

Meta Chumleigh had made the same discovery when 
she attempted the same thing. The associations of 
all Beauty’s stage life had not so far been such as 
would have altered her apparent origin, and her indi- 
viduality was not strong or ambitious enough to lift 
her into a different class for herself. She was a girl 
who depended upon her surroundings and took her 
tone from them; and though she was gaining a sur- 
face veneer as her material circumstances bettered, 
she betrayed herself by her point of view more than 
by her speech, but most of all when she laughed. 
Miss Brampton was quick to recognize this, and the 
situation caused her to give way to cold, quick gaiety 
— Mildred’s young, clever face was so frankly dis- 
turbed at the memory of Miss Darling at home! 
Neither of the Vansagnews were really pretty from 
the Allonby standard, though Daphne had been pro- 
nounced “ lovely ” by certain critics, in classical parts. 
Mildred was five-and-twenty and her sister three 
years older. Beauty thought them passee and no 
longer girls, though Mildred looked far younger than 
her age; but she was bound to respect the position 
they had gained by earnest study and talent and hard 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 25 1 

work. Her engagement at the Phoenix was rather 
a distressing experience for her, for all the old 
standards of her stage career were altered, and in 
consequence she found herself very inferior and un- 
important. Just as she had missed her usual make- 
up, and the advertisement of all her best “ points,” 
so she found that mentally she was also nowhere. 
The Profession was a serious thing at the Phoenix, 
and did not lead to supper-parties, and love-letters, 
and presents — especially the presents. Mildred had 
not a single trophy of this kind, because such as had 
come her way she had rejected. Daphne, the more 
famous sister, had had anonymous gifts that could 
not be returned, but she certainly did not boast by 
them. Mrs. Germaine was, in Beauty’s estimation, 
an old woman, and past such experiences. And these 
three were the only women besides herself in the cast. 

Beauty went to see Folly in the hospital in October. 
The child had been born earlier than was expected, 
but it was perfectly healthy — a heavy, lusty boy, 
flourishingly indifferent to the fact that he had no 
right in the world, and was the shameless proof that 
his mother had “ got caught.” Folly looked very 
pretty in her wrapper, lying on her pillows, and was 
full of the hospital and the life there, and what the 
nurses told her, and the few other patients of whom 
she had caught a glimpse. The immediate things of 
life filled it for Folly Bird. She hardly troubled her- 
self even about the future, save that she was ecstatic- 
ally grateful to the doctor for having brought her 
through “ without a scratch on her.” 

“ Just think, Beauty! He always attended to me 
himself — wouldn’t let the nurses do it. They say 


252 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

they never saw him so careful of a case. Doctor 
says he’ll look me over carefully before I go out, 
and he’ll bet a fiver no one could know it had hap- 
pened ! ” 

Beauty felt sick and queer again. This coming into 
contact with unknown maternity filled her with un- 
reasoning dread, and it had been a real effort to visit 
Folly. She sat by the little white bed and listened 
— the bed where Folly had gone through such a hor- 
rible experience, such threatening pangs! — and the 
young mother babbled on, half foolishly, half coarsely, 
appraising her child’s healthiness and size, and at- 
tributing it outspokenly to her own splendid physique 
and the doctor’s care — “ Though you wouldn’t think 
such a baby could own a father like Renny Spiers,” 
she said with the Satyr giggle. 

The nurses moving to and fro through the ward 
glanced with interested curiosity at the friend who 
had come to see Mrs. Carter (Folly had appropriated 
her father’s name again, with the married title), for 
they knew that it was Beauty Darling who had sung 
the “ Cannibal Lover ” at Allonby’s, and was now 
at the Phoenix. Public opinion had generally pro- 
nounced her the prettiest girl on the Musical Comedy 
stage — perhaps the most beautiful of her type on any 
stage. What they saw was a slim girl in black, whose 
clothes were exquisitely made in the extreme of 
fashion, with an immense black hat that made a frame 
for her fairness. Yes, she was very, very pretty — 
but it was of a paler and graver type than the nurses 
would have expected. She was curiously unsmiling 
and unlike the girls on the picture post cards, and 
there was something almost startling in the long- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 253 . 

lashed blue eyes looking out of the smalj, soft face. 
Perhaps she and their patient were such very close 
friends that she had been overanxious, for Mrs. Carter 
certainly never suggested any other girl coming to 
see her, or spoke of them with the same vague grat- 
itude. 

“ Beauty, you have been a darling pal to me ! ” 
Folly said, clinging to her friend’s hand. “ I don’t 
know what I should have done if you hadn’t stood by 
me as you have! I told doctor so, and he said he’d 
seen you in this new piece and you are so pathetic 
that it was painful! Think of that, and at the 
Phoenix! You’ll be such a swell you’ll never come 
back to us. Oh, I want you to see baby — you’re to 
be his godmother, you know. Nurse, do bring back 
baby for Miss Darling to see.” 

Folly’s frankness was not encouraging, but Beauty 
set her teeth with a shiver as the nurse placed a 
flannel bundle in her arms, and turned back the folds 
carefully so that she could see the red, crumpled face. 
The child, thinking that it was his mother, made an 
obvious movement towards her breast, and she was 
seized with a fierce desire to thrust him back in the 
nurse’s arms, and shriek and flee. But the baby, not 
finding the nourishment he sought ready to his mouth, 
began a pitiful cry, and Beauty was instantly relieved 
of him by the nurse, who laughed and laid him down 
by Folly. 

“ There, I declare ! — he wants his mummy ! And 
he thinks every lady he goes to is going to feed him ! 
Keep the clothes over you, Mrs. Carter. We don’t 
want you to get a chill ! ” 

Folly smiled, and lay back, suckling her child. 


254 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

There was a certain contentment in the movement, 
and a familiarity in the way she held him in her arm 
that was worse than anything to Beauty. She felt 
that in Folly’s place she would have refused to have 
the child near her — she must have hated it — she 
could never have nursed it. And yet Folly, who had 
fought so against its birth and would have done any- 
thing to destroy it unborn with safety, had slid easily 
into maternity, and took her functions as natural and 
even pleasant. Beauty sat and watched the mother 
and child in a kind of fascinated repulsion for a few 
minutes before she left, and it seemed to bring it 
home to her afresh with shocking distinctness. This 
was what it was to “ get caught ” — the unspeakable 
pain (Folly had given a highly coloured account of 
her confinement), the helplessness, and being handled 
by doctors and nurses as if she were a mere “ sub- 
ject,” then this giving suck to the unwelcome child 
that drew its undesired vitality from her own. 

“ No, I could never, never go through that!” said 
Beauty Darling to herself as she walked way from 
the hospital. “I should either kill myself or — it!” 


CHAPTER XI 


J ANET rang the bell of a house in Little Mayfair 
street, and then turned round and looked up and 
down the street for possible motors stopping at this 
or other doors. For it was her business to be curious, 
and all information was as her stock-in-trade. There 
was no one calling upon Mrs. Simpson or Miss Bird, 
however, as far as she could see, and the houses far- 
ther down the street were equally deserted. Janet 
turned again as the door was opened, and nearly 
dropped a parcel she was carrying. 

“Well, I declare, my lord! Are all the servants 
dead and you doing their work?” 

She spoke with free familiarity, for she knew the 
good-looking boy in the doorway fairly well. He 
was a tame cat in Mrs. Simpson’s house, and was 
generally to be found there when Janet went to and 
fro with messages from her mistress to Miss Bird. 
He was in fact Lord Bannishmann, Lady Jane Law- 
less’s elder brother. He laughed at Janet’s remark 
and stood aside to let her in. 

“ The servants are out for the evening, and we’re 
taken on in their place,” he said. “ I’m footman, 
Bartig is scullery-maid, and Hermal is butler. Come 
in, Janet — is that for Miss Bird?” 

“Yes, and don’t you crush it!” warned the maid, 
as he took it carelessly from her. “ I’m in a hurry, 
255 


256 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

so I’ll just leave a message and take back the answer 
if you’ll kindly tell Mrs. Simpson.” 

“ All right — I’ll give this to Miss Bird ” — he 
tossed up the parcel and caught it cleverly, unheeding 
Janet’s exclamation and clutch at his arm. “ What’s 
the message? ” 

“ Miss Darling will come round to-night after sup- 
per — she’s sorry she can’t come before, but she’s 
engaged.” 

“ All right,” said the boy again, and Janet departed, 
warning him once more to be careful of the parcel. 

Lord Bannishmann strolled into a room on the right 
as soon as she was gone, with the parcel in his hand. 
There he found Mrs. Simpson and Folly, looking 
over aome costume plates and drawings which were 
plentifully strewn on the floor, while Lord Hermal, 
in his shirt-sleeves, was laying the table for supper 
and tendering advice. 

“Who was that at the door, Bannie?” Mrs. Simp- 
son asked as he entered, and Hermal left the room 
to fetch the dishes. She jerked the last fashion plate 
on to the already littered floor, and put her feet up 
on another chair. The last two years had not im- 
proved Mrs. Simpson; she drank gin stronger than 
she used, and she rarely spoke without an oath, the 
which, however, it is not convenient to record. 
Nevertheless, she was a pretty woman still, as in the 
days when gay Jack Simpson married her and learned 
in bitterness what daily association with such a type 
of girl can mean. Perhaps there was something to 
say on her side too, for he had taught her how to 
gamble with health and strength and a sound consti- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 257 

tution, and during the year they had lived together 
they had “ gone the pace ” from feverish day to sleep- 
less night, until excitement became a necessity and 
drugs the inevitable alternative. 

“ It was Beauty’s maid,” said Bannishmann, drop- 
ping the parcel over Folly’s shoulder into her lap. 
“ She left this, and Beauty will come in after grub.” 

Folly gave way to a shriek. “You garden ass! 
You’ve screwed it all up in your hand, and it's my 
new nightie that Beauty’s been embroidering for me. 
Beauty works just too beautifully — you should have 
seen — ” 

She stopped rather shortly and began to unpin the 
parcel. What it was that Lord Bannishmann should 
have seen were the baby clothes that Beauty had 
made for Folly’s child and her own godson. They 
had not been a labour of love, and Beauty had some- 
times paused to shudder at the thought that she might 
have been doing this for herself, and to thrust the 
dainty work out of sight, but she had been ashamed 
to confess her repugnance to Folly, who was as de- 
voted to the baby as if she had had a legal right to 
him. It had been the natural maternal instinct, no 
doubt, but it gave Beauty Darling a feeling of further 
abasement for herself. When Folly was well enough 
to go back to the Stage the child had to be handed 
over to a foster-mother, and was sent into the country. 
How she had cried! A habit of playing with and 
accentuating the emotions, which is indissoluble from 
Stage work, does not lead to reticence in private life, 
particularly in such a girl as Folly. But as the weeks 
went on she had found it more and more convenient 
17 


258 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

not to have the child at hand, to be obliged to hustle 
it into the background or explain its dubious existence. 
Fate had favoured Folly. Her story had not gone 
beyond the gossip of certain dressing-rooms, and if 
the general public had heard rumours it did not half 
believe them even while it repeated them. Lord 
Hermal, Folly’s most lucrative admirer, was away 
with his regiment at the time on foreign service, and 
when he came home on leave Folly was reinstated 
in the front ranks at the Satyr, and the young man 
fell a victim afresh. He was dangling now, haunt- 
ing the house in Little Mayfair Street, and at present 
busy in the kitchen getting the supper ready. No 
wonder that Folly did not inform Lord Bannishmann 
as to what specimens he ought to have seen of Beauty 
Darling’s embroidery! 

“ Janet told me not to crush it, now I think of it,” 
said the young man languidly. “ Let’s look at the 
beastly thing, anyhow.” He snatched an end of the 
garment and pulled it out to the accompaniment of 
another scream from Folly, and Mrs. Simpson looked 
up and swore at them for making such a filthy row. 

“ Come, it’s not so bad ! ” said Bannishmann, with 
the air of a connoisseur, as the mass of silk and lace 
and embroidery fell through his hands in soft billows. 
“ I’ll ask Beauty to do me a suit of ‘ jamies ’ on the 
same pattern ! ” 

“ What’s all this? ” asked a rather deeper masculine 
voice, as Hermal re-entered with the wine in his 
hands. He put the bottles down just in time before 
he saw Bannishmann, whereat he gave a boyish yell 
and capered wildly round him, nightdress and all. 
“Where’d you get it, Bannie? Oh, my sainted aunt, 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 259 

how improper ! I blush for you all ! ” He hid his 
face with mock modesty in the folds of silk, and 
Folly jumped up and dragged him away by the simple 
process of her arms round his neck. 

“I’ll smack your head if you touch it!” she said, 
breathless with laughter and her struggle with the 
young man, for Hermal had caught her by the shoul- 
ders and was pretending that she was trying to kiss 
him and he wouldn’t let her. “ Oh, do dry up, you 
two kids ! Babs, tell them to chuck it ! ” 

Mrs. Simpson shrugged her shoulders, and declined 
to join in the melee. “ Where’s Bobbie?” she said. 
“ I want my food. I’ll dismiss the lot of you as no 
good for servants if I don’t get it soon.” 

“ Bobbie’s in the pantry, smashing up the plates,” 
chanted Hermal. “ I say, Folly, what are all those 
fashion pictures strewing round for?” 

“ It’s the fancy ball at the Sporting and Dramatic 
Club/’ said Miss Bird promptly, picking up a study 
of a young lady in “ panniers ” and thrusting it be- 
fore his astonished eyes. “ We want Beauty to go 
just like that ! ” 

“ It would be death to dance with her ! The new 
‘ hug ’ would never get there across those skirts. 
What are you going to wear ? ” 

“I’ve got my dress — Fatima — trousers that will 
make you blink, and a turban up top! Babs is a 
Bacchante: she looks topping.” 

“ Put it on to show us ! ” said Bannishmann. “ Do ! 
— wear it for supper ! ” 

“ Let’s all rig up — the girls have got their togs, 
and we’ll see what native talent can do for us ! ” said 
Hermal brilliantly. “ Come on, Babs ! Bannie shall 


260 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


be the Order of the Bath, and I’ll be a Greek God. 
May I use the sheets for drapery? Got any bath- 
towels ? ” 

“ You know best ! ” said Mrs. Simpson insolently. 
“ Did you leave any last time I put you up ? You 
and Bobby had a free fight in the bathroom, I know. 
Here, I want a drink ! ” 

“ But you will put on your Bacchante dress, Babs ? ” 
said Bannishmann, as he opened the sideboard with 
the surety of knowledge that he should find the gin- 
decanter and a siphon ready to hand. 

“ Oh, all right — I don’t care. If anyone else 
turns up they’ll think we are all dotty, that’s all ! ” 

“ It’ll only be Beauty, and she’ll understand.” 

Beauty Darling was not, however, the only visitor 
that Sunday evening. Some one else had unex- 
pectedly preceded her, and when she arrived she 
found more than the remnants of a supper-table pre- 
sided over by Mrs. Simpson in fawn skin and tunic, 
with a wreath of tipsy vine-leaves falling from her 
unbound hair. Her appearance was so appropriate 
to the occasion that the remainder of the party ap- 
peared the less bizarre, though Folly Bird had en- 
cased her shapely limbs in delicate fabrics that did 
not by any means conceal them, and had discarded 
the yashmak to eat her supper in comfort, while 
Bobby Bartig had transformed himself into a very 
dirty chimney-sweep by aid of the household black- 
lead and sundry brushes. Hermal’s bare arms and 
neck were as white as a girl’s, and the sheet in which 
Folly had draped him made him more suggestive of 
a victim to the barber than the God of Day; but 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 261 


Bannishmann was pronounced the most successful of 
the impromptu trio by reason of his silk pyjamas, 
the bath-towel arranged round him as a kilt, the 
sponge for the sporran, and a shaving-brush stuck 
in his improvised Scotch bonnet. Beauty laughed till 
she was breathless to recognize the three young men 
in the costumes in which they vowed they would go 
to the Sporting and Dramatic Club ball; but there 
was a fourth — a stranger to her — in evening dress, 
whose correctness made him look a still greater alien 
in the noisy party, and her mirth died rather suddenly 
in her surprise. Yet he was neither standoffish nor 
reserved in manner, for he was laughing heartily, and 
joining with some freedom in the jokes that the 
empty champagne-bottles had engendered. Beauty 
glanced at him before he was introduced to her, and 
hardly glanced again, though she was aware that he 
fixed his gaze steadily upon her from the minute of 
her appearance. But then men so often did that ! He 
was a tall and thick-set man, some years older than 
the three light-hearted boys who were ruining them- 
selves so cheerfully over Mrs. Simpson and Folly 
Bird — a man with reddish hair and bold strong eyes 
and a square jaw. Beauty thought him ugly on the 
instant, though she knew that he was “ the real thing ” 
(some years ago she would have said swell, or toff), 
and there was a certain soft spot in her heart for 
his peculiar colouring ever since the episode of George 
Mannering. She had really been fond of George, 
and he was the first man who had touched her fancy. 
Beauty was always kind to red-haired men in conse- 
quence, 


262 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ Well, you are hot in here ! ” she said good- 
humouredly, throwing aside her long furred cloak. 
“ It’s fairly cold outside.” 

“ It’s our costumes, duckie!” said Folly, with her 
eyes a trifle brighter than usual from the wine. 
“ These silly asses of boys persuaded Babs and me 
to try them on, and then got up on their own as 
you see — so we had to have the room hot.” 

“ The whole atmosphere is suggestively warm ! ” 
said the red-haired man, laughing, and looking at 
Beauty in her evening gown — she had been dining 
with a select party at the Ritz. 

“ Ah, d’you two know each other ? ” said Mrs. 
Simpson coolly. “ The Duke of Leicestershire — 
Miss Darling! ” 

“ No, I don’t think we’ve met before ! ” said Beauty, 
leaning a little forward to put her hand into the 
Duke’s hard palm. She remembered vaguely that he 
was a great hunting man, and very fast; married 
two years since, and though notoriously unfaithful 
to his wife, no use as a permanent catch. But since 
he was a duke, and his income was some hundred 
and fifty thousand a year, she was glad that her gown 
was one of Elegante’s, and that it suited her so well. 
Her deep eyes, under the curled lashes, looked up at 
Leicestershire as he pushed a chair for her a little out 
of the heat of the fire, and the moist, red lips parted 
in a slight smile as she said “ Thank you ! ” 

“ I think I had the pleasure of seeing you at Al- 
lonby’s about two years ago,” he said promptly, taking 
the seat nearest to her. The supper had given way 
to cigarettes, but Mrs. Simpson’s glass was still half- 
full of champagne, and the young men were sitting 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 263 

in attitudes more suggestive of ease than elegance. 
Lord Hermal and Folly, indeed, had pushed their 
chairs back and put their feet up on the table in 
friendly rivalry — Bartig was detailing a certain 
gossip to his hostess, none too clean — and Bannish- 
mann was half uneasily watching the Duke. All 
three young men had been momentarily divided be- 
tween embarrassment at being caught in such uncon- 
ventional attire and the youthful conceit that made 
it a point for Hughie Leicestershire to see the inti- 
mate terms they were on in the house of a well-known 
and advertised stage beauty and a woman of notorious 
reputation. The Duke, however, was not even look- 
ing at his hostesses or their men friends; he was 
looking at Beauty Darling. “ Didn’t you sing the 
‘ Cannibal Lover ’ ? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, that awful song ! ” said Beauty, with a little 
laugh. “ I shall never get away from it. You don’t 
know how sick of it I was ! ” 

“ Yes, and she’s been asked about a million times 
to sing it for charities since,” put in Bannishmann. 
“ Parsons write to her as the * Cannibal Lady ’ when 
they don’t like to admit that they know her name! ” 
Mrs. Simpson broke into a line of the well-known 
song — 

“ He’s — my — Cannibal ! — my — black — Hannibal ! — 

Won’t you come to dinner, and we’ll serve you up a(s) stew! ” 

Then Folly took it up and the young men joined in, 
Bartig improvising a fine and unexpected tenor. 
Even the Duke caught the air in a good baritone ; but 
high and strong and clear above them all soared 
Beauty Darling’s voice as she took her old song out 


264 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

of their mouths, as it were, and sang through the 
chorus, the others falling to a mere accompaniment. 
When she sang she tilted up her chin so that the char- 
acteristic shape of the jaw was thrown into promi- 
nence and the full muscles of her white throat rose 
and swelled. Leicestershire looked at her a little 
curiously, with the hard, intent gaze that he turned 
on a horse in the show-ring, but for the minute Beauty 
did not know. She had flown away on her round 
top notes, and her consciousness saw again the mass 
of white faces in the pit and gallery as the last bars 
went out across the footlights — 

“ Oh, my dusky lover, I’m a little Cannibal — 

For I could — just — eat — you ” 

she paused, laughed, and added, with the old provo- 
cative challenge — 

“ with kisses ! ” 

Somebody started clapping — was it Leicestershire ? 
— and for a minute the room seemed as noisy as the 
theatre, with the inevitable burst of applause and an- 
swering laughter. 

“Well!” said Beauty, with a little sigh and smile 
together, “ I shall be back in it all to-morrow ! ” 

“And you’ll be glad, dear — ” It was Folly who 
spoke, with open affection and admiration. There 
was a generous strain in Folly’s nature, for all her 
coarseness and slipshod life. Her hand rested even 
now in Hermal’s for all the company to see, but she 
did not mind, though every one present probably ex- 
aggerated the relations between them. “ I always 
said it was a sin to bury you in little Comedy parts 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 265 

when you might have been tip-top in Musical Com- 
edy ! ” 

“ How long have you been away from Allonby’s, 
Beauty?” asked Mrs. Simpson carelessly. “ Nearly 
two years, isn’t it? ” 

“ Yes, I was at the Phoenix first, and then on tour 
with that crowd for six months. Then I went to the 
Centurion and to Bingham’s, and toured again, and 
came back to this last show at the Roscius. I’ve 
played about six parts altogether.” 

“ You know,” said Bartig, with the authority of a 
very young man, “they never gave you a real show 
with your voice. Thelma or Kinross ought to have 
written a part for you that gave you a chance.” 

“ Oh, I did pretty well with ‘ Peggy ’ at the Phoenix, 
and in that Japanese drama at the Centurion,” said 
Beauty. “ But you can’t get on much further in Legit- 
imate Drama as long as all the old hands block the 
way. Why, look here, there’s Daphne Vansagnew at 
the Phoenix, and her sister at the Roscius, playing 
lead for the past five or six years at least (Daphne 
has, anyway), and the public are supposed to be so 
used to it they won’t stand anyone else.” 

Beauty had a comfortable habit of ignoring the 
fact that the Vansagnews were very able and ver- 
satile artists, and that her own success had depended 
from first to last upon her name — the reputation of 
a unique face and the singing manner that had made 
the “ Cannibal Lover.” She had never been anything 
but Beauty Darling, and she never would be. That 
was why Edgar Allonby had not carried out his half- 
conceived scheme of starting a new house for Comedy, 
and starring Beauty. She had not proved herself 


266 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


capable of the work she must have undertaken, and 
though the public had endured her impersonation of 
minor characters in good plays, they were after all 
only variations of Beauty Darling in different cos- 
tumes. 

“ Theatrical stars ought to be put on to the half-pay 
list after a certain age,” said Bannishmann senten- 
tiously. “ They should be retired by force, like the 
Services, to make way for the younger fry. I sup- 
pose Allonby is awfully glad to get you back, 
Beauty? ” 

“ Poor old Papa ! He’s looking very ill,” said 
Beauty, with real kindness and regret in her voice. 
“If we had rehearsed a week longer I think he’d have 
broken down. He’s just pushed us through and that’s 
about all.” 

“ He never really got over that operation seven or 
eight years ago,” said Folly. “ He looks older than 
our Nolly now.” 

Leicestershire had been listening in silence, his keen 
hard eyes always on Miss Darling, as if interested. 
He turned to her now. 

“ Tell me what this new piece is, and what you 
are playing. I’m only just up from the country for a 
few days, and I’m out of all this,” he said frankly. 

“ It’s the new Musical Comedy at Allonby’s,” 
Beauty explained courteously. “We open to-morrow 
night. I’m playing lead, as Mr. Allonby advised me 
to come back to the Musical Comedy stage. I’ve 
been working in real Drama for two years, and he 
thinks it’s a pity to waste my voice.”* 

“ I quite agree with him — Allonby is a smart man. 
and a good fellow. I know him fairly well. 1 am 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 267 

sorry to hear he is so ailing. Is it anything seri- 
ous ? ” 

“ I am afraid so — rather. Well, of course we hope 
not! We should feel that the bottom of the universe 
had dropped out if anything happened to Papa; but 
he really ought to have a complete rest, and he can’t 
take it because he’s always producing.” 

Leicestershire had reason to say that he knew the 
great Manager well. It was Allonby who had handed 
him over to Nolly O’Donnovan and the Satyr years 
ago when he was only Marquis of Melton, with the 
shrewd remark that if he wanted mischief he had 
better find it amongst the Satyr girls than those at 
Allonby’s; and at the Satyr Lord Melton had made 
the acquaintance of Miss Barbara Sinclair and had 
been reported as having “ run her ” for a brief period 
before she met and married Jack Simpson. Whether 
or no there was any truth in the canard the Duke 
was certainly an old acquaintance of Mrs. Simpson’s, 
as well as knowing her divorced husband in his own 
world. When Barbara and Jack came to matri- 
monial grief he did not entirely drop, the woman’s 
acquaintance. He was shrewd enough to see that 
there had been wrong done on both sides ; and in spite 
of her increasing fondness for stimulants and bad 
language, “ Babs ” Simpson was a very pretty 
woman, and she amused him — a reckless, ruined 
beauty, running downhill, but still playing the game 
with such boys as Bannishmann and Bobby Bartig. 
It was to see Barbara that he had gone to Little May- 
fair Street, his Sunday evening threatening to be dull 
after an enforced family dinner, for he knew that at 
Mrs. Simpson’s house he should at least be enter- 


268 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


tained, not wisely but too well. He had never given 
another thought to the pretty child who had sung 
the “ Cannibal Lover ” two years ago at Allonby’s, 
though he remembered her at once when he saw her. 
But he had not been in the room with her for five 
minutes before he acknowledged that he was attracted, 
and it pleased him that the little actress would stand 
the ordeal of criticism at close range and without 
powder and paint. As a rule he saw a girl first across 
the footlights* and was taken by some wickedness or 
wanton gesture before he exerted himself to get an 
introduction. In the case of Beauty Darling he had 
not even come to the house to meet her — it was 
merely the machinery of Fate, and he wondered a 
little whether she would have been any prettier or 
more seductive on the stage. 

When Beauty rose to go the Duke rose also, and 
asked if he might see her home. “ You must at least 
let me call a cab for you, for none of those extem- 
porary footmen can do so in their present uniform ! ” 
he said, laughing. 

“ Nice set of servants I’ve got ! ” put in Mrs. Simp- 
son insolently. The wine she had drunk had not ap- 
parently affected her, but the light in her eyes was a 
little more reckless, and her speech even more un- 
fettered — she looked the Bacchante to perfection. 
“ I shall sack the whole — lot of you, and go in for 
girls again.” 

“ A month’s wages, please ! ” said Hermal promptly, 
holding out his free hand. 

“ And a good character ! ” added Bartig. 

“ You haven’t a character between you,” said Mrs. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 269 

Simpson with her fearlessness of truth. “ And you 
won’t find one in my house! Good night, Hughie. 
Take care of Miss Darling for the honour of Al- 
lonby’s to-morrow night.” 

Folly went out into the hall with Beauty to whisper 
confidences. Hermal was too bluetink (this was the 
Satyr expression of the moment for anything super- 
lative), and wanted to marry her at once. Was it 
safe to take him? What did Beauty think? 

“ Take him at once — while he’s hot,” said Beauty 
almost fiercely. Supposing by another stroke of Fate 
Folly had to go through that again ! And none could 
tell what she might give Hermal — Folly was too gen- 
erous. 

“ But there’s the kid — ” 

“ Never mind the kid — he need not know; even 
if he finds out you can say he’s your sister’s child, 
and you are supporting him — it sounds well.” 
Beauty gave a hard little laugh. “ Don’t hesitate a 
moment — take him ! — I must go — the Duke has 
got a cab.” 

She kissed Folly hastily and pushed her back to 
the noisy supper-room, followed by a last whisper 
at her ear. 

“ Beauty, old girl, be careful of Hughie Leicester- 
shire! He’s as fast as a mad dog.” 

The gentleman in question was holding the door 
of the cab for Beauty as she wreathed the folds of 
her cloak round her and got in. He had not brought 
his own car to wait for him outside Mrs. Simpson’s 
house, perhaps for obvious reasons; but he followed 
Beauty into the cab as a matter of course, and gave 


270 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

the direction of the rooms at Chelsea as she instructed 
him. The girl leaned forward as the taxi turned 
round, and saw the front-door still open and Lord 
Bannishmann dancing derisively in the light of the 
hall — then the astounding vision went out in a slam 
of the door. 

“ They are all mad in that house ! ” she said, laugh- 
ing. “ Really Babs lets them go a bit too far some- 
times.” 

“ Bannishmann will find himself in trouble one of 
these days, if he is not careful,” said the Duke quietly. 
“ I suppose there is no chance of getting into Al- 
lonby’s to-morrow night, Miss Darling?” 

“ Every seat’s gone ! ” said Beauty, shaking her 
head. She looked at the man at her side with a little 
slow smile on her red lips, the faint triumph before- 
hand of being leading lady at the best House of 
Musical Comedy and not a seat empty! The Duke 
looked back, with that faintly veiled, devouring gaze 
of a beast of prey that Beauty had seen more often 
than not in men’s eyes. She recognized it as a type 
of compliment, but remembered Folly’s last whisper. 
This man was as fast as a mad dog. — 

“ Well, I shall try my luck with old Allonby, any- 
way. We used to be friends. I hope the old boy 
is not too seedy to be at the theatre.” 

“ No, he’ll be there ; but you won’t be able to see 
him.” 

“ I must get in somehow, if I sign on as a scene- 
shifter ! ” 

She laughed at the suggestion. “ Why not wait a 
few weeks ? It will be far better worth seeing then.” 

“ I shan’t be in town in a few weeks — besides, I 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 271 

want to see you on the first night. Are you very 
nervous ? ” 

“ Awfully ! I’m going straight to bed when I get 
home, to have a good night’s rest at least. I didn’t 
mean to go out to-night, only I was bound to dine, 
and then Babs and Folly are such old pals that I went 
on. Their rooms are hot though! If I caught a cold 
it would be serious. You see, everything depends 
upon my voice, with me.” 

He pulled up the window, which had been the least 
crack open. “ Quite right,” he said. “ We must 
take care of you. But I suppose when the piece is 
runnin’ you sometimes accept invitations to supper, 
don’t you? ” 

The usual preliminaries of wooing! Beauty knew 
them so well. Suppers, luncheons, up-river parties on 
Sunday in the summer, the skating clubs in the win- 
ter; then flowers, and jewellery, and if a girl were of 
Jewish ancestry and could save her money there would 
be some little flutter on ’Change and a good invest- 
ment. But that was generally when her Best Boy 
was in with, if not of, the Stockies. Beauty saw all 
this beginning in the suggestion of supper. It had 
begun so with Cuthbert Noble, whose advances were 
still made through such channels, despite her refusal 
to accept them. But her own work had come to her 
rescue, and she had seen less of Noble lately than she 
could have ensured by her actual will. The year after 
she left Allonby’s her whole energies had been taken 
up with making Folly’s living as well as her own, 
keeping the young mother and child and her own 
position as Miss Beauty Darling, late of “ Cannibal ” 
fame, whose notoriety depended upon her appearance. 


272 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

To do her justice, nobody had assisted to dress Beauty 
since she left Allonby’s, and her hats and frocks and 
furs had been no less expensive. Edgar Allonby’s 
illness, and her own detachment from his theatre, had 
deterred him from paying her bills, openly or secretly ; 
gradually his ill-health had drifted them apart, until 
Beauty felt without definite words that the situation 
between them was at an end. She was still sincerely 
attached to Allonby, and honestly concerned at his 
illness. But she had long lost the sense of his having 
been her lover. It seemed such a distant thing, and 
to have come to an end so naturally. Even her land- 
lady had forgotten it in a measure, though Beauty 
still kept on the rooms at Chelsea, and paid for them 
herself, which sometimes meant that the rent was 
behindhand. The woman was, however, rather proud 
of having Miss Darling as a lodger, and took a sort 
of possessive pleasure in her, humouring her whims 
and looking after her comfort, the while she gossiped 
with Janet of the young lady’s conquests and suc- 
cesses. Janet had stayed with Beauty, though a little 
scornful of the very small figure she cut in Legitimate 
Drama compared to her position on the Musical Com- 
edy stage. Impertinent, familiar, outspoken even 
when it was not complimentary, Janet was still one 
of those influences in Beauty Darling’s life that in a 
fashion owned her and exploited her. 

Janet took care of her mistress as a property with 
which her own fortunes were identified. She did not 
rate Beauty as of much higher caste than herself, 
save for the miraculous gifts of her face and voice, 
but she kept the thin veneer of servitude for the world 
to see. For the last twelve months — since Folly 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 273 

Bird had gone back to her work at the Satyr, indeed 
— Janet had kept her shrewd eyes open for a chance 
to turn her knowledge of Folly’s “ illness ” to account, 
for the secret she had discovered in that letter to 
Beauty might be worth something some day — if 
Folly married, for instance. She looked for a suitor 
for Beauty also, and thought at one time that he 

had been found in Captain Noble — but Beauty 

was cautious for once in her life and had not, as 

yet, betrayed to Janet that she had actually re- 

fused to marry him, being, in fact, a little ashamed 
of her own reluctance, and quite aware of the point 
of view that Janet would take. Marriage, followed 
by divorce, was not so bad an advertisement, and the 
man’s social position might open up further possibil- 
ities to Beauty — a second marriage with millions, 
or, if not marriage, a “protector” with the same to 
“ run her.” The affair with Noble had not come to 
a head as soon as Janet expected, and she was a trifle 
impatient. Beauty herself could not quite have told 
why she had not lured him back again, or accepted 
his overtures to renew the intimacy. She thought she 
had been a fool to refuse him — she was almost 
afraid to tell Janet — she always meant to make up 
her lost ground, but somehow at the eleventh hour it 
seemed easier to let things go, and she never made any 
real effort. For one thing, the study that was forced 
upon her very moderate brains with each new part left 
her less time for going about with the men who 
offered her outside entertainments, and the shorter 
runs that Comedies had, made such studies far more 
frequent than in the Musical Comedies that ran for 
two years before they were played out. 

18 


274 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

The one influence in Beauty's life that Janet hated 
and openly contested was Michael Phayre’s. She 
attributed to him, rightly or wrongly, the patient 
year of harder work and less advancement, and she 
would have slammed the door in his face on the occa- 
sions of his rare visits, if she could. There was 
nothing to be gained, from Janet’s point of view, in 
knowing Michael Phayre — he was not even a suc- 
cessful artist who painted society’s portraits or had 
his pictures bought for the Christmas Numbers of 
the “ Graphic.” On the contrary, he seemed to find 
hard work and poverty so tolerable that his content 
would be reflected in Beauty after she had been with 
him, and the marriage for position or the big salary 
for little art seemed further off than ever. Janet 
was very glad that her mistress was going back to 
Allonby’s. 

Beauty did not for a moment think that the Duke 
of Leicestershire would be in front on the opening 
night of the new play, for she knew that the house 
would be packed, and he must try to get a seat at 
the eleventh hour. She did not even greatly believe 
that he was very keen, though she confided his ac- 
quaintance to Janet as soon as she got home, and 
gave herself a few airs about it — Beauty talked too 
much to her maid. Janet was on the scent like a 
sleuth-hound, and asked far shrewder questions than 
Beauty would have done, the while she brushed her 
mistress’s thick curls and massaged her skin with 
cream to balance the effect of paint and powder. 

“ He wasn’t there when I called with your parcel, 
for that fool of a Bannishmann opened the door to 
me, and I’ll take my oath there was no one else but 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 275 


the two others — Hermal and Bartig. I wonder how 
the Duke came there ! ” 

“ He knew Mrs. Simpson’s husband — he told me 
so on the way home,” said Beauty, yawning. “ I 
don’t suppose he’ll get into Allonby’s at all — he’s 
only in London for a few days at most — just while 
the frost lasts and he can’t hunt. He’s not much 
like a London man.” 

“H’m!” said Janet, still busy with her fingers. 
“ You don’t know — it’s something to be a duke if 
you want to get in where other folks are kept out. 
I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he were there. Did 
he seem to mean it ? ” 

“ Oh, he meant it all right, while we were in the 
cab together,” said Beauty with unconscious cynicism. 
“ He may not mean it to-morrow, if there’s a thaw.” 


CHAPTER XII 


T HE house was packed. Long before the opening 
night of the new Musical Comedy every seat that 
could be booked beforehand had gone, and as early 
as three o’clock the long queue at the pit and gallery 
doors had reached from Wellington Street into the 
Strand. Very few seats had been returned either, 
and so those people who trusted to their luck at the 
last minute were met with scant ceremony at the box- 
office, and turned away to await their turn some weeks 
hence. 

There were several reasons for the rush. London 
had grown a little tired of the long runs at the Satyr 
and the Sovereignty, and though those pieces still drew 
good enough houses to pay, a fickle public wanted a 
new sensation — new tunes to strum — new wheezes 
to repeat. Then the “ Gay Dogs ” had been royally 
advertised, from simple placards to interviews with 
Edgar Allonby in the Halfpenny Press — Edgar Al- 
lonby, himself a good advertisement in his convales- 
cence. Rumours of the novel features of the piece 
had got about — of something so audacious in the 
nature of a “ kissing dance ” that the Censor had had 
to be seduced, like Herod, with the performance it- 
self, and had promised the performers Mrs. Grundy’s 
head on a charger. Lastly, there was Beauty Darling, 
who had had her votaries from “ Cannibal Lover ” 
276 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 277 

days, and was reappearing at Allonby’s after her year 
or so of Legitimate Comedy. 

The Savoy, if nothing else, would have kept Beauty 
before her public. It was her Advance Agent and 
her Advertising Manager. She was so well-known 
in the supper-room there that other diners took her 
as a favourite dish in the menu, and were inclined 
to be injured if she were not on view. “ When does 
your foie gras come on ? ” they might say, and in the 
same breath, “ Is not Beauty Darling here to-night? ” 
She was so pretty off the stage that it was worth 
while going to see her on, particularly in a part where 
a little more of her might be visible in the gloating 
limes that spared her no blushes. So the public came 
to see Beauty kissing and kissed, and the box-office 
man said, “ We’re full for three weeks ahead now 
— we shall fill for three months to-morrow or next 
day. Not a seat left — not standing room!” This 
was true, and had been true for some time; yet 
the days of miracles being with us still, his Grace the 
Duke of Leicestershire was sitting in a box on the 
O.P. side of the stage when the curtain rose, though, 
as he had admitted, he had no seat on the preceding 
night. Who shall say that the aristocracy has lost its 
power, or that there is no longer magic in strawberry 
leaves ? 

Beauty Darling herself was sitting in her own 
dressing-room, painfully nervous. It was the star 
dressing-room at Allonby’s, on the ground floor, and 
for the first time she had it to herself, redecorated 
for her in pale blue and furnished with many other 
things than the regulation cane chair, dressing-table, 
and washhand-stand of the work day professional. 


278 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

There was a Louis Quinze screen round the elaborate 
washing apparatus, and the rest of the room was 
rather suggestive of a cosy-corner interview than 
anything else. Beauty was sitting before the triple 
looking glass in the searching electric light, adding 
the last touches to her make-up, and swearing freely 
at every fresh knock for admittance which made her 
start in overwrought state. 

“ I declare it’s too ba*d — worrying you like this ! ” 
said Janet, herself a little upset at the constant sum- 
monses, though she revelled in the new position. No 
one knew better than Janet the rights of a Leading 
Lady, though she had seen her mistress through many 
shared dressing-rooms. She went to the door at this 
last knock, and parleyed with some one on the 
threshold until Beauty grew impatient. “ Who is it, 
Janet ?” she said irritably, drawing the pencil slowly 
over the lines of her perfect brows that she would 
not alter in shape, but only darkened. “ I wish you’d 
either send them away or let them in — there’s a 
damned draught ! ” 

“ It’s that journalist — Mr. Robinson, then!” said 
Janet in a loud aside, turning with the door-handle 
still in her hand. “ Are you going to see him ? ” 

“Yes, of course — let him in. Come in, Max!” 
Beauty went on with her lashes without turning round, 
and merely greeted the journalist with a continued 
question. “How do I look, Max? Have you been 
in front ? I hope it’s a good House. I’m so nervous, 
I’m sure to dry up ! ” 

“ Nonsense, Beauty ! ” said the new-comer with 
easy familiarity. He was a big young man, with 
commonplace good looks and an assured manner 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 279 

which it is kindest to attribute to the influence of his 
profession. “How do you look? Ravishing! — 
and fit to ravage — eh? Have some fizz before you 
go on — you’ll be all right.” 

“ I wish I dared ! But Eddy won’t let me drink 
— says it will spoil my voice, and I shall go squiffy.” 

“ Eddy be — ! Tell him to wear the Blue Ribbon 
himself. I’ll send you in a glass if you’ll drink it,” 
said the young man good-naturedly. He was very 
big and very black and white in his evening dress, 
and he seemed to overflow the delicately upholstered 
lounging chair in which he sat. “ Seen our first page 
to-day ? ” he asked with the same exuberance. “ It’s 
great. A rumoured engagement between you and an 
M.P.!” 

“ No ! ” Beauty forgot her nerves, and turned 
round to laugh. “ Oh, Max, you are a boy ! That’s 
a good Ad.” 

“ The best you could have. If Chorley writes to 
the papers to deny it the thing will go in rag-time. 
It’s a leader in the ‘ Post ’ on 4 The disgraceful canard 
set afloat by the Halfpenny Press/ and an apology 
from us in leaded type. Then, letters to the ‘ Tele ’ 
and a correspondence. Your name’s in all. Beauty, 
give me something for the stunt to-morrow ! ” 

Beauty looked round her, seeking inspiration. Her 
brains were not of the springy order, though her face 
might be made of roses. It was Janet who nudged 
her. “ The Beasts, miss ! ” 

“ Oh — there ! ” Beauty picked up Doggy-Babs 
and Cuddle-Puddles and thrust them at Robinson, 
laughing. “ My Beasts, Max ! Give them a show 
for themselves ! ” 


280 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ What the devil!” — Max Robinson caught the 
blue cat and the apricot dog in his hands and looked 
at them with sharpened eyes. “ Beauty and her 
Beasts,” he said, coming over to the dressing-table to 
examine the rest — birds with elongated necks, lions 
in trousers, dragons whose limbs turned in every dis- 
torted attitude, purple cows, and unicorns who had 
come out in a rash of bunches of flowers. He made 
a few marks on his large white cuffs, and shouted with 
laughter. “ I’ll christen the lot ! ” he said. “ Leave 
it to me. What’s this array of toilet soaps and 
scent? ” 

“ Oh, samples. They want me to say I use them, 
that’s all. That case of perfume is worth five pounds, 
Max, and will do me for six months. I don’t have 
to buy much toilet stuff.” 

There was another knock at the door. Janet went 
to it, and Max turned round with the costly “ sam- 
ples ” still in his hands. “ ‘ With Messrs. Sachet’s 
compliments, and they hope for Miss Darling's patron- 
age,’ ” he read with an indescribable twist of his 
mouth. “What’s up, Janet?” 

“ Flowers,” said Janet laconically, bringing in the 
scented heap. She laid a card down before Beauty, 
and parted a few of the velvet roses from the whole 
bouquet — just as she had done Mr. Chorley’s lilies 
years ago. “ Here, you’d better put them into your 
bodice,” she said significantly. 

The card was a plain one, simply written on — 
“ Please let me see you later — if you are not too 
tired. — Leicestershire.” Beauty and Janet and the 
journalist read it together, and Max Robinson whis- 
tled. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 281 


“Since when, Beauty?” he said. 

“ Last night — at Babs Sinclair’s house.” 

“ You know he was running Edna Carruthers 
once ? ” 

“ That must be ages ago ! Why, she was snuffed 
out when I was a kid ! ” 

“ There’s always some one. It was a girl in Paris 
last spring. Fact! I knew a man on our Rag over 
there who watched the whole thing.” 

“What do I care?” 

“ Well ! — Are you going to see him? ” 

“ What do you think ? ” 

“You’ll be a little fool if you don’t!” said Rob- 
inson with conviction. “ He’s got money, and he’s 
a duke anyway. Well, I wish you luck, old girl ! ” 
The voice of the call-boy echoed down the ringing 
stone passage, “ Curtain up, please.” Then came a 
thump on the door. “ I must scoot,” said Robinson. 
“ Going to give me a kiss, Beauty? ” 

He made a feint of leaning over her, and the girl 
shrieked for her paint and powder and caught him 
a hard box on the ear. Robinson called out, laugh- 
ing, and Janet added to the noise by ordering him 
out — “ Now, I don’t want my lady upset, Mr. Rob- 
inson ! None of that, please. Out you go — ” and 
he was pushed into the passage, there to fall in with 
the rush of a dancing troupe coming downstairs, who 
knew him intimately, and pulled him this way and 
that in rough horseplay. If it had not been the open- 
ing night the fun would have grown uproarious, but 
at a first performance everybody was a little anxious 
and subdued. The girls let Max Robinson go with 
a crumpled tie, and themselves made for the wings, 


282 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


while from the dressing-room just above came the 
lilt of the Lead, trying his opening bars in an unac- 
companied tenor. 

Beauty was glad to be back amongst the sounds 
and sights she knew best, the careless singing in the 
echoing back ways (the theatre behind the scenes was 
like a barracks, and as bare), the comparatively easy 
rehearsals, the exemption from strain. In Comedy, 
as she had found, every movement counted, and every 
word must be fitted to the movement. “ Put both 
hands up to your face, Miss Darling — now at ‘ Don’t 
touch me’ drop the left — now turn — isn’t that bet- 
ter, Pope?” “Much better for me. Now I needn’t 
move until my line. Do I crowd you, Miss Darling? ” 
Beauty had found it wearying. Here, in Musical 
Comedy, there was much marshalling and drilling, 
but things were on the whole easier; the cast was 
not strung to concert pitch unless Syddie Hughes 
were really angry and began to bucket them. If 
somebody were “ fluffy ” on this opening night, an- 
other person would “ gag ” and save the scene drop- 
ping. When she left her dressing-room for the icy, 
whitewashed passages and draughty wings, she was 
nervous, as she had admitted; but she was not ter- 
rified and half delirious, as she had been on that first 
night of “ Jacob’s Ladder ” when she had played 

“ Peggy.” 

Her entrance was a pretty one, for she was pelted 
with roses by a laughing crowd of the chorus, already 
on the stage. She had of course been heralded by 
many allusions to her approach, and the audience 
were expecting her. The clapping began as she raced 
through the rain of flowers and stopped at the foot- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 283 

lights in the middle of the stage, standing still for 
a moment that the public might look their full at her 
before she spoke. 

Oh, exquisite rose-petal face! Oh, Youth, seduc- 
tive and passionate and breathing perfume ! She was 
so audacious in the advertisement of her fairness, 
and yet so soft and round and dimpled — no line of 
tire in her as yet, no bruise visible upon the fruit of 
her womanhood. She stood as if abloom in the hot 
light of the theatre, while the audience called her 
name — 

“ Beauty — Beauty Darling ! ” 

And in the stage box on the O.P. side the Duke of 
Leicestershire took up his glasses with a steady hand 
and focused them upon her. He was critical, this 
man of thirty-three, for he had sampled many lovely 
women, despite his heavy face and red hair. 

But there was no flaw in Beauty. She was wear- 
ing a little white frock with a sailor collar that left 
her neck free, and a kind of crimped cap to frame 
her glossy curls and pretty baby face. The only spot 
of colour about her dress was the roses tucked into 
her breast, above her heart, which Janet had so skil- 
fully detached from the rest. She sang well, for her 
training stood her in good stead, and after the quiver 
of the opening bars she regained her confidence. But 
it was at the end of the first act that the success of 
herself and the piece was assured, when she appeared 
in another dress for the “ kissing dance,” for which 
the audience had waited. Beauty’s garments were 
very demure, and reached nearly to her feet, but as 
she slid out a small foot the draperies parted and 
betrayed the fact that they were split almost up to 


284 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

the thigh, while, as she swung, the silk swung too, 
and for the moment bared her to the waist. It was 
not a waltz, though the rocking rhythm was in waltz 
time, for the man caught the girl’s hands up in his 
as she stood with her back to him, looking over her 
shoulder, and always slipping away as he pressed 
closer. It was the symbol of the pursuer and the 
decoy, under the decency of sliding steps and a timed 
measure. Now he had her — now she swung under 
his arm and came again, alluring, mocking, while the 
audience strained forward, eager at second-hand for 
the fulfilment of a baulked desire. The men’s faces 
in the stalls were a study, and the women gasped a 
little, wiping all feeling from their eyes lest some- 
thing there should betray them. — Beauty raised her 
clasped hands towards her partner’s mouth and 
caught a kiss before she broke away again — swung 
in the hollow of his arm and turned her face so that 
the caress was lost amongst her curls, — and always 
the light feet kept sliding time to the music; until, 
with a rush of notes, the stage lover caught the elusive 
figure as if in a gust of passion, dropped her head 
back against his shoulder, and with his. lips pressed to 
hers carried her backwards through a fall of rose-silk 
curtains to some suggested bower. And the girl’s 
abandonment of pose and upturned laughing face 
were the last that the excited House could see. 

Edgar Allonby, sitting in the stage box w.xh the 
Duke of Leicestershire, looked round on the deafening 
audience and almost smiled. He had seen many suc- 
cesses, but he had never seen a more uncritical tri- 
umph; for after all Beauty Darling was not a great 
artiste, either as an actress or a dancer — she was 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 285 

simply offering the same wares that a beautiful slave- 
girl might in the marketplace. Even the Duke had 
not used his glasses this time — he was not appraising 
as when the curtain first rose. If his broad, heavy 
face had not been typically reserved it might almost 
have been a little moved, and indeed his healthy colour 
did seem to have deepened, and his eyes at least were 
full of unusual fire. 

There were five calls, but the principal dancers did 
not repeat their whole intricate performance. Four 
other couples came on instead, and all together went 
through a certain portion of the dance, ending with 
the prolonged embrace, but with a more tempered 
exit. Then, of course, came the Comedians — really 
the artists of the piece — and the final clashing chorus 
that always brings down a curtain. The buzz of con- 
versation that arose instantly after its descent sounded 
a little ejaculatory, and several stalls emptied them- 
selves as if by magic; but after all the audience was 
British, and there was nothing to suggest that it was 
either startled or unusually excited. 

“ Look at those young fools ! ” said Allonby to his 
companion, as three or four young men with vapid 
faces and much shirt-front slipped out of the side 
entrances. “ They are going round to the stage-door 
to try to get speech with my girls. They will catch 
nothing but a bad chill in this snow — this is not the 
Satyr.*' 

“ They're young,” said the Duke, yawning. “ Ten 
years ago I dare say I should have done the same.” 

“ There’s Cuthy Noble going now,” remarked Al- 
lonby dryly. “ He’s just as much a fool as the rest, 
and he can’t give you ten years! ” 


286 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


Leicestershire glanced down with some amusement 
in his face. “ There are some old friends of his 
in the opposite box,” he said. “ Lady Bannish- 
mann and her daughter. Is he going behind, or to 
their box — what ? ” 

“ He is going behind,” said Allonby with quiet de- 
liberation. “ He is after my leading lady — but he 
will not see her. He had better have gone to Lady 
Bannishmann.” “ Papa ” was generally correct in 
his information. This time it came through Janet. 

“ It is certainly a pity,” said the Duke in a level 
voice, and he looked across the house at Lady Jane, 
very pretty and well-groomed, and apparently enjoy- 
ing the comments of Sir Everton Toff — save for her 
troubled eyes. She knew quite as well as Allonby 
that Noble had left the stalls, and her heart had gone 
very sick as she watched her rival behind the foot- 
lights. The kissing dance did not even make her 
uncomfortable or shamed, for her clear eyes saw 
nothing but the prettiness and the grace and the 
charm. 

“ She is very, very pretty ! ” she said to herself 
honestly. “ It is no use saying she is not, because 
one can’t pick holes in her — if I were a man I should 
be just as mad about her as all the rest!” and then 
to Sir Everton : “ I am enjoying it so much ! I have 

never seen so many pretty girls together, and the 
comic man makes me laugh so ! ” 

“ H’m ! ” said Sir Everton, sticking his glass in his 
wicked old eye. “ There used to be a better set at 
the Satyr — that’s the show for pretty girls. Did 
you see Edgar Allonby, the Manager, in that oppo- 
site box? He’s gone now — left Hughie Leicester- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 287 


shire alone. Hulloa! Hughie’s got a note! — take 
the glasses and look, Lady Jane!” 

“ What are you telling Jane? ” said Lady Bannish- 
mann, turning round at the last words. “ You are 
not to enlighten her mind — Hughie Leicestershire, 
did you say? Has one of those chorus girls written 
to him, really? How disgraceful — and how amus- 
ing!” 

It was quite true that the Duke had risen and gone 
to the back of the box to receive something from an 
official, but as a matter of fact it was merely a verbal 
message. “ Miss Darling would see a few friends 
after the play was over, and if he would care to come 
round with Mr. Allonby.” The Duke tipped the man, 
and strolled back to his seat, quite unconscious of 
“ Everton Toffee’s ” active glasses. 

Beauty was not seeing anybody between the acts, 
for she was really tired, and exhausted with excite- 
ment and the strain of the performance. Janet stood 
like a dragon at the door, and only grudgingly 
admitted the names of those whose luck or per- 
sistence had got their cards through by well-paid 
hands. 

“ Here’s Captain Noble — you had his flowers 
earlier. You won’t see him, I know — ” 

“ No, I really can’t. Give him my love — say I’m 
played out — tell him to come some night next week.” 

“ And Mr. Lawless ? ” 

“ No — nor him either.” 

“ Lord Bobby came round before — while you 
were still on — and Hermai. I sent them both away.” 

“ Quite right.” 

“ And that Michael Phayre — ” 


288 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 


“ Who ? ” said Beauty sharply. “ Mr. Phayre ? 
When did he come?” 

“Just now — Mr. Jester brought him through.” 
(Jester was the Comedian, and a “ pal ” of Beauty’s. 
They had toured together.) “They are old friends, 
I suppose.” 

Beauty had started up restlessly from the sofa 
where she had thrown herself. “ Did he go to Mr. 
Jester’s dressing-room? Is he still in the theatre? 
I’ll see him — I want to. Go and see if he is still 
there, Janet — ” 

“ But — ” 

“ Do as I tell you ! ” said the girl angrily, with some- 
thing of the accent of Peckham in her voice. “ If I 
want him you’ll fetch him — or you’ll go. I will 
have what I want ! ” and the blue eyes filled with 
hysterical tears. 

Janet shrugged her shoulders, half as angry as her 
mistress. She hated Michael Phayre. But she ran 
down the passage and up the stairs to Jester’s room 
— he was a floor higher than Beauty, and so far re- 
moved from greatness — hoping that the artist might 
have left. He was still there, however, smoking 
cigarettes with three or four men in the frank Bo- 
hemian fashion that he seemed to find so easy even 
while he kept his strange aloofness, and he got up 
and followed Janet at once. 

“ Come back and have another drink, old fellow,” 
said Jester cordially. “ Miss Darling won’t let you 
stay long. It’s an all-night sitting here.” 

“ Give her our love,” said another voice. “ And all 
the very best. We don’t get a chance to speak to her 
during the Show, and she’s a real Darling.” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 289 

“ All right ! ” said Michael, laughing. 

He came into Beauty’s upholstered dressing-room 
with the old kind smile in his strained eyes, bringing 
with him a whiff of the hard days when they shared 
their poverty together, and Beauty Darling sprang 
up with both hands outstretched and a quivering 
mouth. 

“ Oh, Michael ! ” she said breathlessly, and he knew 
that she must be very overwrought by the sudden use 
of his name. “I’ve just been longing for you — I 
wouldn’t see anyone else, but I felt you’d do me 
good ! ” 

“ Why, Beauty,” he said, sitting down with her on 
the dainty couch, “ this is perfectly lovely of you — 
and on the night of your great success, too.” 

“ Ah ! ” she said quickly, and her voice dropped 
lower, “you were waiting for me on that dreadful 
first night of ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ when I failed — I 
wanted you to come when I succeeded.” 

“ But it wasn’t a failure,” he said calmly. “ It was 
only a first step that faltered a little. And look what 
a lot of good your year of training has done you! 
You wouldn’t have been such a success to-night if you 
hadn’t played all those parts in Comedy.” 

“ Do you really think they did me good ? I hated 
it, you know. I was glad to come back to this.” 

“ I am sure it did ” — he paused a minute and looked 
round with some surprise, for Janet was banging 
things about the dressing-room in a very bad temper, 
making as much noise as she dared. Beauty heard 
too, and flashed round upon her with exasperated 
nerves and the anger of a child. 

“How dare you make that damned noise, Janet! 

19 


290 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

You’re doing it on purpose, because you know I want 
to talk to Mr. Phayre. I won’t have it — do you 
hear? Go out of this room, and stay out till I ring 
for you. Go to hell ! — do you hear ? You’ll kill me, 
upsetting me like this ! ” 

“ You’ll kill yourself talking when you ought to be 
resting,” said Janet, with an equally raised voice and 
her own impertinence. “ Go out of the room, indeed ! 
Yes; and if I don’t come back, who’s to finish dressing 
you? Now you’re on the verge of crying — that’s 
nice, with all the act to sing through. I wonder Mr. 
Phayre hasn’t more sense than to come in like this 
when you’re — ” 

“ Go out of the room! ” screamed Beauty, her eyes 
flashing like a small virago, and throwing the nearest 
thing at Janet in her passion — it happened to be a 
heavy silver-backed brush, and it fell with a loud bang 
on a vase of roses, which it broke. Both women were 
so angry as to be almost beside themselves, but the 
scene was rather abruptly ended by Michael Phayre 
taking Janet by the shoulders and putting her into the 
passage. She was so surprised that she did not at- 
tempt to re-enter the room, but stood there sobbing. 
They could hear her through the door. 

“ Now, Beauty, you’re not to cry,” Michael said 
authoritatively, sitting down on the couch again by the 
girl’s side. He looked at her, heaving and panting 
still from her gust of passion, the tears rolling down 
her cheeks, and marvelled that she should be so beau- 
tiful in such a mood. All the trickery of the stage 
was gone from her for the moment, and she was so 
natural that she was almost noble without her usual 
airs and graces. She stretched out her hands to him 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 291 

impulsively, and he took and held them firmly, while 
she struggled to obey him and recover herself. 

“ Oh, Michael, I’m so — upset ! ” she gasped. 
“That beast of a woman! I’ll send Janet away — 
I’ll speak to Ed — to Mr. Allonby.” 

“ No you won’t, Beauty, not without thinking it 
over. Janet is devoted to you in her own way. What 
is all this upset? Not only the strain of a first 
night ? ” 

“ I don’t know — I’m frightened ! ” Into the big 
blue eyes crept the terror of a lost child again, a look 
that Michael had seen there once or twice, and that 
always made his heart ache. “ I feel as if something 
were going to happen to me — something dreadful.” 

“From one particular person?” said Michael qui- 
etly. 

“ Yes — no — I don’t know. It’s only since last 
night. I told Janet something had happened. — I 
didn’t think much of it — but I know she’s got it in 
her mind. She’s working for one thing — she means 
me to have him,” said the girl confusedly. It seemed 
as if she hardly knew what she said, for Beauty was 
not imaginative, but in her highly strung condition 
she was almost prophetic. 

“ To marry him? ” Phayre was thinking of Noble, 
and a slightly worried look darkened his eyes. The 
marriage of a girl of Beauty’s type with Cuthbert 
Noble could only have one ending in Michael’s sad 
common sense — a few years of reckless excitement 
and extravagance that might teach her fatal habits, 
and then the inevitable separation or divorce, and a 
rush downhill back to the gutter “ from which she 
came ! ” in Mrs. Darling’s ominous words. 


292 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“ No, not marriage ; he is married. Oh, I have 
given Cuthy the chuck — I know you’re thinking of 
him.” 

“ A married man ! And Janet wants you — ” 

“ Yes, you see he’s — well, it’s a good ad., and a 
girl gets known. Besides, there’s a lot of money in 
it. I’ve hardly seen the other either, oh for ages ! — 
you know, my rooms at Chelsea.” 

“ I’m almost sorry for that, Beauty,” said Michael 
Phayre with brave frankness. “ He kept you very 
straight, you know, and he’s been good to you. You 
owe him something.” 

“ Oh, yes; everything! ” The tears welled into her 
eyes again. “ It came naturally, Michael — I didn’t 
break with him myself.” 

“ And he’s not a young man now — ” 

“ I know — can’t you see I’m sick with myself about 
it? And he’s been so ill — ” 

“ Who is the other man that Janet favours? ” asked 
Michael quickly. “ You don’t want to tell me, 
Beauty ! You’re putting it off ! ” 

“ It’s — the Duke of Leicestershire ! ” 

“The Duke of Leicestershire!” This was such a 
high flight for Beauty that Michael almost doubted. 
No wonder Janet wished it, if it were within the possi- 
bility of truth! Royal favour was only a step fur- 
ther. “ Are you sure ? ” he said. 

“ Well ! — I met him at Babs Sinclair’s last night ; 
and he’s got into the theatre somehow to-night, though 
you know we were full weeks ago. He sent those 
roses,” nodding at the upturned vase. “ He’s with 
Papa, in his own box — they’re coming round after 
the show.” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 293 

Michael drew a long breath. “ Only last night ! ” 
he said blankly. “ What are you going to do. 
Beauty ? ” 

“ I don’t know ! ” 

“ You are afraid of him? ” 

“ How did you know ? ” she said, with that strange 
childish look in her face again. “ I wasn’t at first — 
I didn’t think much about it. But to-night when he 
sent the flowers — and then I knew he was in front — 
and I saw what Janet was up to.” She paused and 
shivered. “ I am horribly afraid,” she said. “ And 
yet — ” 

“ And yet he’s a duke ! ” 

“ No, it isn’t that, though it counts,” said Beauty, 
and her voice rose almost to a little cry. “ But he’s 
so strong — he would ride roughshod over you. And 
I feel somehow like a rat in a trap when he looks at 
me. At first I thought it might be rather good fun, 
just while he was in town, to have some one young, 
and jolly, and ready for a good old time — but, to- 
night — it suddenly began to look different — ” 

She ended with an hysterical little laugh that met 
no answering amusement from her hearer. All he did 
was to repeat his former assertion with curious in- 
sistence. 

“ You are afraid of him ! Why are you afraid of 
him? ” 

“ I tell you I don’t know. I feel as if something 
dreadful were going to happen.” 

“ Through him?” 

“ Yes — I suppose so.” 

“ Can you say No, Beauty? ” 

“ I said it to Cuthy Noble ! ” 


294 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“ Then say it to Leicestershire.” 

She did not answer; but he saw her small hands 
tremble as she pulled some drooping roses from her 
breast and flung them on to the dressing-table. He 
did not know Beauty Darling in this mood, and it 
worried him to find the right way to help her. At 
the best, she was so overstrained and nervous that she 
was deluding herself for no reason; but even that 
he would have liked to have soothed and put right for 
her. At the worst — but he was not to come face to 
face with that until another first night which lay 
ahead. 

He had no chance to say more now, for Janet 
knocked at the door at last, in a subdued and injured 
manner much at variance with her usual assertion. 
Beauty took no notice of her when she entered; but 
Phayre rose to take his leave, for the call-boy was be- 
ginning his startling knocks all down the stone pas- 
sages. 

“ I hope the second act is not very tiring for you,” 
he said kindly. “ But anyhow the piece is a great suc- 
cess, Beauty.” 

“ It’s awfully sweet of you to come round and tell 
me ! ” she said, once more the Musical Comedy Star. 
“ Are you going back to Lawrie Jester? He’s a good 
sort ! I didn’t know you knew him ! ” 

“ I left him arguing about his Press-agent,” said 
Michael, laughing. “ The fellow thought the job was 
worth five pounds; Jester said ten shillings! I don’t 
think I’ll venture into the fray again.” 

“ They’re awful frauds,” agreed Beauty. “ But 
you must have an Agent. They sometimes influence 
the public — they never take in the Managers, any- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 295 

how. I’d rather have the real reporters, like Max 
Robinson, who’d do anything for me ; but Lawrie Jes- 
ter has been out of London and doesn’t know anybody 
on the papers. He’ll have to have an Agent at first.” 

Michael shook hands with her in silence and went 
his way down the echoing corridors. On the stairs 
leading to the stage-door were two or three young 
men in evening dress with well-bred, vapid faces, wait- 
ing for the chorus girls already, and beyond the door 
itself a string of private motors, representing just so 
much wealth and so much folly. 

“ H’m ! the Allonby girls are in request to-night,” 
said Michael Phayre, as he walked quietly past the 
doorkeeper and out into the stinging cold of the win- 
ter night. A man talking to the doorkeeper turned and 
looked at him sharply, showing a handsome, dissipated 
face and eyes that were too lined for his age. It 
was Cuthbert Noble, and Phayre guessed at his iden- 
tity, without, however, realizing that the young man 
would have given most of his worldly prospects just 
then for the privilege which the struggling artist had 
just enjoyed — a tete-a-tete with Beauty Darling in 
her dressing-room. Michael went round to the front 
of the house again, and his modest seat in the upper 
circle, booked weeks ago, and turned a pair of old 
opera-glasses on the Manager’s box. He found 
“ Papa ” easily, the big man with the broad, clean- 
shaven face, looking unusually flabby with illness, for 
Edgar Allonby had returned to his place to see the 
curtain rise on the second act ; and beside him Michael 
could just discern another figure in evening dress, sit- 
ting rather back, with his head turned away. By 
dint of neglecting the stage and keeping his glasses 


296 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

focused quietly on that figure, the artist at last got the 
view he wished, and saw a young man with reddish 
hair, a heavy line of jaw, and nothing, certainly, at all 
ducal about him. 

“ The ordinary fox-hunting squire ! ” he said to him- 
self. “ I wonder why Beauty was afraid? ” 

Beauty wondered at herself an hour later, when, 
in the midst of laughter and handshaking amongst the 
Principals of the company who were gathered in her 
dressing-room, the Manager walked in, accompanied 
by his companion in the box. There was champagne 
going at last, for now that the success of the first 
night was assured, and the frantic calls taken and re- 
taken, Allonby had himself sent round the wine and 
sandwiches for the majority of his cast. But Beauty 
put down her glass with a hand that was not quite 
steady as she met Leicestershire’s eyes across the width 
of the room. Her blood raced in her ears and her 
heart stood still for one dreadful moment as she 
waited there, paralysed. It was as if some overwhelm- 
ing force were advancing to claim her — not love, but 
naked terror. 

“ You must be very tired, Miss Darling! ” he said as 
he reached her and shook hands. “Too tired to come 
out to supper ? ” 

She shook her head faintly, trying to still the panic 
fear in her heart and to answer with her usual assur- 
ance. 

“ If I ask Allonby, too? ” he said in a lower voice. 

“ I’m too awfully tired for anything, thanks — I’m 
going straight home.” 

“ But you did that last night ! ” 

“ Miss Darling,” said Oscar Bennett, the leading 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 297 

man — he had been Beauty’s stage lover of a few 
minutes since — “ Mr. Allonby has ordered supper at 
Fradelle’s for us.” 

“ Oh ! ” said the girl, a little nonplussed and still 
labouring under that unusual excitement and sense of 
distress. “ I suppose then — But I was going home ! ” 

“ Come along, dear. You must show, but you 
needn’t stay long,” said Allonby himself, coming for- 
ward to speak to her hurriedly. “ I can’t do without 
my leading lady ! ” 

A sudden memory came over Beauty Darling with 
the words — a memory of a little girl in a short skirt 
and a sailor hat sitting in a deep chair in the Man- 
ager’s room at that very theatre, and telling him that 
she wanted to go on the stage, and of how he had 
laughed and introduced her to his subordinates as his 
new leading lady ! How far off the kindly irony had 
made it seem then! And now it was accomplished. 
But on this night of fulfilled ambition there was that 
strange, bitter taste of apprehension, and the presence 
of a man whose social position would have made him 
like an unattainable hero of penny novelettes to the 
child who was once Beauty Darling. She turned her 
deep blue eyes on him slowly, and found him as 
steadily regarding her. Beauty knew that look, and 
read what it portended. Many men’s eyes had brought 
her the same message, and some she had rejected and 
some she had half allowed. But she had never met 
it with the same hopeless thrill of fear that struck her 
from the rather plain and subtly brutal face of the 
man who happened to be born a duke. Ah, but it was 
the man! the man! If he had been a common la- 
bourer and Fortune had willed that their destinies 


298 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

should cross, she knew that she would have found her 
master. 

“ I wanted to have you all to myself, — but I suppose 
we must accept Allonby’s invitation,” whispered Leices- 
tershire as he lifted the fur coat on to her bare shoul- 
ders. Beauty had already changed from the scanti- 
ness of her stage costume into an even scantier evening 
gown. There was plenty of her in view to adver- 
tise the little that remained hidden. But the dimpled 
softness of her arms and neck were like a child’s, and 
her skin could stand the test of the brilliant lights in 
the dressing-room even though the paint was honestly 
removed from them. 

It was not a late supper-party, though it went with 
the fizz of champagne, as Lawrie Jester declared. 
Every one was in capital spirits, and the excitement 
of the night seemed almost a tangible and evident 
thing, like the froth on the sparkling wine. They 
drank Beauty Darling’s health, and Allonby’s, and 
Oscar Bennett’s, and Lawrie Jester made a little 
speech for Beauty in answer, at her own request, 
though he was the least important amongst those few 
of the Company who were present. But Edgar Allon- 
by’s state of health excused him from speaking or 
from staying late, and he got his leading lady away 
before the rest of the party broke up, on the plea of 
fatigue. Leicestershire accompanied them to the 
street where the cars were waiting, and offered to take 
them both home ; but Allonby had his own Siddeley in 
attendance, and declined the offer. 

“ I want you to come on a little shopping excursion 
with me, to-morrow — will you?” Leicestershire 
asked Beauty as he helped her into the landaulette. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 299 

She hesitated, and he added, “ Let me call for you at 
least, and see if you are not too tired? ” 

“ I shall probably be asleep still,” she said, laugh- 
ing. 

“ If I come about half-past twelve? We can lunch 
somewhere, and then get to the shops.” 

“ I might be up — ” She had not meant to give him 
even so much chance, but her lips seemed to answer for 
her without her will. 

“ I shall come anyhow and see ! ” 

He fell back as Edgar Allonby followed them out 
of the restaurant, and shook hands easily with the 
Manager. 

“ Awf’ly good of you to let me in to-night,” he said 
in a different tone. “ Wouldn’t have missed it for 
anything. Hope Miss Darling isn’t fagged out. Good 
night ! ” 

Allonby nodded good-humouredly — his importance 
was undisturbed even beside a duke — and took his 
seat in the car, next to the girl. It was not until they 
had started that he discovered that she was lying back 
in the corner with her hands covering her face. 

“ Beauty ! ” he exclaimed, in real and kindly dis- 
may. “ Why, little girl, you’re worn out ! Beauty, 
what are you crying for? You’ll make yourself sick, 
dear!” 

“ I don’t know ! ” she gasped, clinging to his large, 
knotted hand — the hand of an elderly man for all his 
care and habits of luxury. “ Oh, Eddie, I’m fright- 
ened! I’m not strong enough — ” 

“For the part, do you mean?” he asked, startled. 
“ Rot, little girl ! You did splendidly. You only 
want a few weeks’ run to get into it.” 


300 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“ I don’t mean the part.” Her voice came in strange 
pauses, a little hoarse from the hard work of the 
evening. “ I’m not strong enough for life!” said 
Beauty Darling. 


CHAPTER XIII 


T HE salary of a Musical Comedy Star may range 
from thirty pounds a week up to anything over 
eighty. In Beauty Darling’s case it was thirty pounds 
for her first star part, and she was signed on to Edgar 
Allonby for three years, during which she was to 
advance to forty and then fifty pounds a week, pro- 
viding that she was a success. This is a provision 
skilfully inserted in the contracts offered by Man- 
agers to girls who are “ coming ” but have not yet 
come. Beauty had certainly made a hit with her song, 
“ The Cannibal Lover,” two years ago, but she was not 
then even playing second lead — she was only a girl 
raised out of the ranks of the chorus with a “ special 
turn,” and it did not follow that either her voice or 
her personality would satisfy the public for two ex- 
pansive acts of Musical Comedy, during which she 
was rarely off the stage except when the Comedians 
were expressing themselves like nothing on earth but 
San Mackintosh or Lawrence Jester. (It is for this 
reason that the book of a Musical Comedy has such 
vague suggestions to make to the Comedians. The 
Author may describe them as “ A Devonshire 
Farmer” or “Lord Tilbury’s Scotch Servant”; but 
he knows that such characters will merely be con- 
verted into a Sam Mackintosh part or a Lawrie Jester 
part, and will be played according to the men — cer- 
tainly not according to any directions he might give.) 


302 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

Beauty Darling took the thirty pounds a week grate- 
fully. She had been drawing eight or ten for the 
small characters in real comedy which she had played 
for a year, and it had been much harder work to her, 
though the parts themselves were insignificant. Out 
of her thirty pounds she paid four guineas for the 
board and lodging in her rooms, and at least a pound 
for extras; but if this seems exorbitant, it must be 
remembered that her landlady was an eminently re- 
spectable person in appearance and manners and had 
countenanced many things, including Edgar Allonby. 
There is a certain tale of a Scotch theatrical landlady 
which is illustrative of this attitude, and is known to 
most professionals. She was, unexpectedly, asked to 
accommodate a bishop and his wife on some unfore- 
seen occasion, and when asked her terms, could not 
dissociate herself from her usual lodgers. “ It’s 
twelve shillings if ye are truly married,” she said 
dourly, “ and fourteen if ye are living in sin! ” mean- 
ing it to be understood from the first that a man must 
pay for his indulgences. Beauty, therefore, paid four 
guineas and extras without being able to object; but 
from the time of her larger salary she received no help 
from Allonby, and indeed had an unacknowledged ea- 
gerness to be independent of his actual monetary as- 
sistance. A change in their relations had come about 
naturally, as she stated to Phayre, and she and “ Eddy ” 
had parted in one sense, though she was still his 
protegee and he took the sincere interest in her that 
a man may in the assets of his business, as well as a 
personal kindliness perhaps born of the old sentiment. 
Nobody ever denied to “ Papa ” the milk of human 
kindness, shrewd man of business though he was. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 303 

Out of the remaining twenty-five pounds Beauty had 
to pay Janet — for that astute young woman drew 
her salary as a Dresser at the theatre and made money 
out of her private capacity to Beauty as well — to find 
the fees for the theatre people, and to pay for such 
meals as she had at the theatre and her fares to and 
from her rooms (since she was not a “ keep ” she had 
no motor-brougham), and to dress as a leading lady 
of Musical Comedy. Add to this the claims upon her 
by other ladies in her profession who were not so 
lucky as to play lead, and the traditional generosity of 
theatrical life, and it will be seen that there was not 
that margin from which to put by for a rainy day that 
the uninstructed always urge against improvident stage 
people. 

The clothes were the chief difficulty, though Beauty 
could get credit now, and certain dressmakers were 
willing to work for her on the advertisement system. 
A Musical Comedy girl should wear underclothing 
that runs up to fifteen and twenty guineas the set and 
furs that suggest hundreds. The latter may easily be 
given to her, but though smaller articles of jewellery 
need not be paid for, donors of sables and squirrel 
coats have generally struck a bargain for their full 
value. Beauty had been hampered by Edgar Allon- 
by’s proprietorship and some curious hesitation in 
draining Captain Cuthbert Noble for the gifts he was 
quite ready to bestow. Never very strong in the com- 
mercial instinct, Beauty had by no means got all she 
could have done out of that young man, whether she 
had granted favours in return or no. 

“ Why, if he were my boy,” said Cherry Bough 
frankly, “ I’d have touched him for ermine and shut 


304 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

the door in his face afterwards if I didn’t feel in- 
clined. . . . You are a top-story fool, Beauty! ” 

“ Then he wouldn’t have offered to marry you ! ” 
Beauty retorted, goaded into confessing that she had 
had this chance and let it slip. “ He was awfully keen, 
just because I didn’t bleed him.” 

“ Well, you wouldn’t marry him anyhow, so it 
needn’t have mattered,” said Cherry philosophically. 
“ You might just as well have had a good time.” 

“ He wasn’t rich enough for me,” said Beauty, with 
feeble imitation of the real worldly wisdom that owed 
its inception in Cherry and her kind to generations of 
Petticoat Lane and Houndsditch. 

“ All the more reason to take what you could get. 
It’s better for you that he should get into debt than 
that you should ! ” said Cherry shrewdly. 

Beauty was beginning to feel the bitter truth of this, 
for she was in debt for the first time. Even during 
the darkest days of her career, when she had lived from 
day to day on a dwindling capital in New Cross, she 
had never owed money, possibly because no one would 
have lent to her then except Michael Phayre, who was 
as poor as she, and who — though she did not recognize 
it — had been the quiet influence to prevent her doing 
so of other people. But with the improving of her 
position she began to run up bills — not very large 
ones, it is true, and she generally managed to partly pay 
them off, though it hampered her — until by the time 
the “ Gay Dogs ” started with her as leading lady she 
was uneasily conscious that she had a steadily increas- 
ing account with certain houses which would send 
in bills at the quarter that she could not pay. Her 
early training had made this much more of a dread 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 305 

and discomfort to her than it would have done to 
feckless Folly Bird, or to Barbara Sinclair, who had 
come to regard debt as a mere adjunct of smart life 
since her marriage to Jack Simpson. 

It was at this vulnerable juncture of her life that the 
Duke of Leicestershire’s suggestion to “ go on a shop- 
ping expedition ” came to Beauty Darling. She knew, 
of course, what it meant, and the equivalent to be asked 
of her — sooner or later. She had read it in his 
eyes last night with the fatal certainty of past ex- 
perience. He had almost made up his mind when he 
met her at Babs Sinclair’s perhaps, but he had hesi- 
tated until he saw her successful in the test of the 
footlights. The admiration of other men aroused 
the sportsman’s instinct in Hughie Leicestershire — 
always a mighty hunter — the knowledge that Cuthy 
Noble was going for the same prize spurred him 
on to “ ride jealous ” and show him the way if 
he could, and, lastly, the kissing dance had transformed 
his half critical admiration to mere animal passion 
— a man’s natural desire to snatch the girl who had 
thrilled him at second hand out of other arms than 
his own and experience that actual sense of posses- 
sion. There was something about Beauty Darling, 
despite the familiar allurements of paint and powder 
and stage tricks, that made men mad with longing to 
crush the softness of her face against their own, as if 
she had been Youth incarnate. 

Beauty slept late into the morning after the first 
night of the “ Gay Dogs,” for she was after all only 
twenty-two, and Nature healthily reasserted herself. 
At eleven o’clock Janet brought her in her breakfast, 
and saw that she roused to eat it and did not fall 


20 


306 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

asleep again, for she knew quite as well as Beauty 
who was coming later on to take the girl out. Beauty 
was an asset in the business life of Janet as well as to 
Edgar Allonby. 

After her breakfast Janet got ready her mistress’s 
bath, and scented it with eau de toilette from the useful 
“ samples ” offered to her patronage, and perfumed 
and adorned the girl’s body for the sacrifice as pro- 
fessionally as any old Jewish priest. She brushed and 
anointed the bright curls with the eye of a connoisseur, 
and brought out costly underclothing from Beauty’s 
wardrobe, smelling of a delicate French powder that 
had lain in its folds. Her ministrations refreshed 
Beauty as much as her sleep, and there was no appear- 
ance, of fatigue about her when she was dressed; but 
a certain nervousness betrayed itself in her every move- 
ment, so that she started twice at the sound of a door 
opening and shutting, and her hands trembled. Janet 
pondered over the symptoms and marvelled a little 
contemptuously. 

“ What’s she afraid of ? ” she said to her own ugly 
consciousness. “She — with all her experiences! If 
she was a young girl going to be married she couldn’t 
look queerer ! — You’ll wear your hood in this snow ? ” 
she added aloud. 

“ Snow ! Is it still snowing? ” said Beauty. “ Yes, 
I suppose so, and that big coat with the mink collar. 
I wish it were sable, mink is so hard.” 

“ You can have sable if you want, I don’t doubt,” 
said Janet brutally. “ Who sent those fur boots? 
Noble? They’re none too smart.” 

“ Never you mind — it’s not your business. Put 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 307 

them on,” said Beauty crossly, stretching out her small 
foot. She was really beautifully made, with her per- 
fect proportion of limb that would be the ideal of 
Eugenics if the science were successful. Janet but- 
toned the little fur boots, and hooked her into a velvet 
gown, minus a collar, of course, but would not have 
her ready dressed to go out until the car actually came. 
She knew the value of making a man wait, even when 
he was a duke. 

It was a year of hoods and close bonnets for motor- 
ing. When Leicestershire arrived, and asked if Miss 
Darling were too tired to come out with him as she 
had promised, he learned that though not ready for 
such an excursion the young lady would be very pleased 
to come and would dress at once. He had just time 
to look round the sitting-room and decide that it was 
an unworthy setting for the new stage jewel, when 
the jewel herself entered, and for a minute he was 
almost tongue-tied, despite the advantages of his ex- 
perience. 

For the dark velvet hood that matched the velvet 
frock was trimmed with dark fur, and against it 
Beauty’s curls made an aureole round her face. She 
had not even a suspicion of rouge in her cheeks, and 
she was rather white than red, but her soft little mouth 
had colour enough, and the blue eyes and tragic brows, 
that were naturally darker than her hair, needed no 
pencil off the stage. She entered with the little rush 
and flurry of her kind, to whom even a sitting-room 
door is an “ entrance ” or an “ exit ” ; but before they 
had reached each other her usual affectation had some- 
how died down, and she stood absolutely silent before 


308 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

him and afraid to look up at the broad, hard face that 
she knew was bent so intently upon her. 

“ I hope you are not very tired. You had a great 
triumph ! ” he said. 

“ I believe I’m half asleep still,” said Beauty, with 
an effort to recover her self-assurance. “ I shall be 
awfully glad to get out into the air — it will wake me 
up ! ” 

“ I suppose you haven’t had time to read all the 
papers yet ? ” 

“ My maid brought me a few notices — very good, 
weren’t they ? Oh, I should think it was sure to run ! ” 

“ Certain — you’ll be going strong this time next 
two years, I should think.” 

“ Gracious ! I hope not. You get so sick of a part. 
I just loathed the ‘ Cannibal Lover,’ you know.” 

“ The- public didn’t ! Are you warmly wrapped 
up? The car is closed, of course, but it’s very cold.” 
He took hold of the loose coat under excuse of fasten- 
ing it for her, and touched her warm, round chin with 
his large hands. The girl nearly shrieked — she could 
not herself have told why — and choked it back with 
a fierce spasm of anger at herself. Was she gone 
mad — she, Beauty Darling, who had laughed with 
insolence in men’s faces, and been as cool as any of 
the Satyr girls at playing an admirer? And yet this 
red-haired, rather brutal man had the power to make 
her flinch and cry out with fear at his first touch — 
not because he was the Duke of Leicestershire, but 
from some unknown, ominous fate that seemed threat- 
ening her in him. 

She must have drawn back instinctively, and he 
fancied himself too abrupt in his advances, for he did 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 309 

not, as she feared, attempt any further familiarity be- 
yond the strong pressure of his fingers on her arm as 
he helped her into the car. She saw the chauffeur’s 
sidelong glance at her, even as she took her place, and 
Leicestershire tucked the fur rug over her knees and 
round her feet. 

“ Where are we going? ” she asked, trying to chat- 
ter as usual. “ You know I haven’t an idea ! I’m 
leaving it all to you — I’m only coming for the fun of 
the expedition ! ” 

“ That’s what I wanted,” he responded coolly. 
“ You leave it all to me ! We’re going to lunch at 
Charvonard’s, and then I want to buy some furs as a 
present for a little friend of mine! ” 

He need not have looked round at her with his hard, 
half-proprietary glance, to explain away the thin pre- 
tence of his offer. She knew that she was herself the 
little friend quite as well as he did, and somehow 
there was none of that complacency and pleasurable 
excitement that a girl should feel who is promised the 
desire of her heart at the moment. 

“ I adore furs ! ” said Beauty, which was quite true ; 
but had she been Cherry Bough or Mona Morley, the 
price she was to pay for them would hardly have en- 
tered into her thoughts, save as a rather pleasurable 
detail. 

“ This is just the right weather to choose them, isn’t 
it?” he said. “ A girl looks so awfully well in furs, 
particularly in the snow.” 

“ I shan’t eat any lunch ; I shall be thinking so much 
about the shops to come after ! ” said Beauty, nestling 
her chin into her despised mink collar, and looking 
up under her lashes in a fashion she had learned by 


3 io THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

stage habit. He returned the glance with so much in- 
terest that she was frightened again. “ I love seeing 
pretty things,” she added hastily, “ oh ! even if I’m not 
buying anything myself.” 

“ I won’t take you to the shops if you don’t do credit 
to my luncheon,” said Leicestershire, with a smile that 
made her feeble disguise of the situation of no value. 

He had ordered luncheon at Charvonard’s, as she 
found, making it evident that, despite his deference 
to her tire, he was pretty sure that he should not be 
companionless at the famous restaurant. Beauty had 
enjoyed the drive from Chelsea to Piccadilly; the 
snow lay white and hardly begrimed as yet, even in 
the roadway, for there had been a fresh fall in the 
night. It hung upon the branches of the stripped trees, 
and the cold sunshine glittered on the white world 
without warming it. The motor bowled along with cau- 
tious smoothness, hardly jarring even amongst the ruts 
of snow, and Beauty nestled back in her corner, en- 
joying the luxury and the warmth and the sense of 
quick motion. It was such a pretty London that she 
looked at to-day, and such a clear, dazzling atmos- 
phere! Perhaps the contrast of some phases of the 
life she had lived made her appreciate it all the more, 
though it was in her nature to love the downy side of 
life, and ease and pleasant things. There was a wide 
gulf between the dark days at New Cross and the pres- 
ent moment, at any rate. 

When she alighted at the restaurant the cold had 
delicately flushed her face, even in the closed motor. 
Beauty had a skin that never became unbecomingly red, 
and her nose never suffered from an east wind as 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 31 1 

many girls' did ; but by an instinct of genius she had 
put neither rouge nor paint on her face to-day, and 
Nature rewarded her by stinging the young blood into 
her soft cheeks. As the heavy glass door swung apart 
the porter looked with open interest at the two incom- 
ing figures, for the Duke was well known at Charvon- 
ard’s, and the “ lady " he was bringing to lunch was 
worth looking at. 

“ Who is she ? ” said the officials among themselves, 
for such gossip flies fast. Somebody recognized her 
in the first five minutes, and comment was general. 
“ It’s that girl from Allonby’s — Beauty Darling. 
She's worth looking at ! ” was the general verdict. 

She was worth looking at. The glowing face in 
the frame of the hood was a dainty contrast to Leices- 
tershire, big and heavy and ’ red-haired, but with a 
certain stamp of the English sportsman about him. 
He had not ordered a private room — perhaps he was 
not sure enough of his position as yet ! — but their table 
was in a secluded corner, and only the two assiduous 
waiters passed and repassed on needless errands to look 
at the Duke's new girl. At the beginning of luncheon 
M. Charvonard himself brought the wine-list, and 
bowed to the lady. 

“ I 'ope everyzing to your liking, your Graze ! " 
he said, and his smile was as smooth as the soubise 
sauce. 

“ I am sure it will be ! ” said Leicestershire good- 
humouredly. “ Will you drink champagne, Miss Dar- 
ling? You’ve a long afternoon’s shopping before 
you." 

“ Zen I am sure ze young lady need it ! " Charvon- 


312 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

ard rubbed his plump hands, and his sentimental 
French eyes rested with veiled adoration on the blue 
eyes and gilded curls and ripe cheeks of the “ Miracle 
Anglais ! ” 

“ Yes, thanks — it’s the only wine I like!” said 
Beauty ingenuously. 

The Duke laughed, and ordered a bottle of Bollinger, 
and M. Charvonard laughed and went away to see 
that it was ready — a mere farce, just as the wine-list 
had been, since it had been ordered when the luncheon 
was booked, and put on the ice precisely long enough. 
But Beauty enjoyed the sparkle and the chill of it, 
and did not trouble to guess that its effect upon her 
had been settled beforehand. She had never fallen 
into the habit of drinking spirits, as many of the girls 
at the Satyr did, because she had been usually hard 
pressed for money, and later on Edgar Allonby had 
kept a steady hand over her in this respect. There- 
fore the wine was really a stimulant, and reassured 
her uneasiness, though without going to her head. 
Those shuddering instincts that had kept her on the 
alert when they started were somewhat allayed, and 
when Leicestershire’s knee touched hers during lunch- 
eon she did not draw away as she had done before, 
on impulse. A little later his broad hand rested on 
her own for a minute under the sheltering table, but 
she did not flinch, though a curious numbness passed 
through her limbs. Perhaps it was that that kept 
her so still, as if all power of motion had gone from 
her. 

Beauty Darling was by no means a sensualist. She 
was far more vain than passionate, and indeed old Sir 
Everton Toff once cynically observed that the most 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 313 

acceptable offer a man could make her was not his 
heart so much as a mirror! She was voracious for 
men’s admiration, and she craved their petting; the 
inevitable outcome of such tributes from masculine 
nature she accepted as necessary, but did not desire her- 
self. Her only sensuous experience had been when, 
as a child, Trevor Guy’s hands had played on her 
nerves and awakened her capacity for physical pleas- 
ure, which, however, had never been so keen since. 
Once, years afterwards, it chanced that Noble was 
wearing a suit of heather tweed, such as Guy had been 
wont to affect, and the musky, oily scent about it had 
given Beauty a curious thrill, almost a faint reflection 
of her former vague desires. But Noble certainly 
could not have satisfied them, being unpossessed of 
the unholy power that lay in Guy’s Satanic hands. 
Beauty had, on the contrary, been really fond of 
George Mannering, and their experience was merely 
the outcome of mutual adolescence; for Edgar Allonby 
she had had a liking based on material advantages to be 
gained from the connexion with him. Even Cuth- 
bert Noble had only attracted her through the glamour 
of his good looks and a certain superiority in class 
and position to her own. Now, with Hughie Leicester- 
shire, she was more repelled than acquiescent, and 
though the wine at luncheon had brought back her 
confidence she was rather glad that there would be no 
chance of any further demonstration in the motor be- 
tween the restaurant and the great fur store where 
they were going. 

As they came out of Charvonard’s it chanced that a 
gentleman was passing on foot. He raised his hat 
to the Duke, leered at Beauty, and replaced the hat a 


314 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

trifle on one side at the angle supposed to be affected 
by King Edward the Seventh. 

“There’s old Toff!” said Leicestershire. 

“ Everton Toffy ! ” laughed Beauty. “ He was aw- 
fully sweet on a girl at Allonby’s named Gertie Grier- 
son years ago when I was in the ‘ Queen of Hearts ’ as 
a kid.” 

“ Was he ? ” said the Duke. He was not above 
gossip, and, besides, of what else are you to talk to a 
star of Musical Comedy save the little scandals of her 
world ? 

“ Oh, yes ; he used to come behind and sit in her 
dressing-room night after night. He always took her 
to Prince’s. I used to see them get into his car- 
riage and wonder if anyone would ever take me to 
Prince’s ! ” 

“ You must have been to Prince’s and all the other 
supper-places often enough since then ! ” — Leicester- 
shire looked round at her with bold admiration as the 
motor rolled on again. 

“ I’ve had an awfully good time on the whole.” 

“ It’s nothing to what you are going to have ! ” 

“ How do you know ? ” 

“ Because I want to give it to you ! ” — 

There was no time for more just then, for they had 
reached their destination. Beauty almost gasped for 
pleasure as they went up the deep carpeted stairs and 
found themselves in the great' showrooms amongst 
such furs as surely no girl’s heart could resist. The 
Duke was known here also — it almost seemed as if 
they were expecting him. One ravishing set after 
another was brought out and with quiet deference 
tried on over Beauty’s velvet gown, proving more and 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 315 

more irresistible as a set-off to her eager face. There 
was no longer any pretence of the “ present ” being 
for another friend; the assistants knew all about it, 
Leicestershire did not deny that he knew all about it, 
Beauty herself accepted the position of knowing all 
about it. She only sighed when she relinquished 
pointed fox for ermine and ermine for seal, coming 
out of the shop finally with a new set of sables flung 
over and around her shoulders and her hands in a 
big muff dripping with tails and paws of the helpless, 
slaughtered animals. No savage could have decked 
his squaw in more barbaric fashion than this very civ- 
ilized nobleman did the little Musical Comedy girl 
whom he was wooing with quite as elementary a pur- 
pose. 

“ Are they really for me? You know it’s too aw- 
fully sweet of you ! ” she remembered to say as she 
found herself once more in the motor, with her spoils 
actually upon her, for he had carelessly suggested 
carrying them straight off. At least there was little 
moral cowardice about Leicestershire. He did not, 
as a more cautious man might have done, keep in the 
background and allow Beauty to act as if she were 
buying for herself. That thin pretence might have 
deceived nobody, but it would have thrown a veil of 
decency over the proceedings. Nor had he suggested 
that she should choose them without his being present, 
and that his part in the transaction should be confined 
to writing the cheque. He was a marked man what- 
ever he did in London, and he knew that perfectly well 
when he appeared with Beauty Darling of Allonby’s in 
the fur store and chose and paid for the sables for her. 
This attitude was illustrative of his character; and the 


3 i 6 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

moralist can call it a sort of coarse courage or shame- 
lessness, according to his creed. 

He did not even tell Beauty that she was a little 
hypocrite for asking her needless questions as to the 
ownership of the sables, though his own fearless men- 
tal attitude would have entitled him to do so. He 
assured her that he was only too pleased to be allowed 
to give her something that she liked, and when she ad- 
mitted that she “ simply loved ” furs and couldn’t af- 
ford them, he said, “ What a shame ! ” Of course any 
girl as pretty as Beauty Darling ought to have every- 
thing she wanted. 

“ You know,” said Beauty with a sigh, “ I shouldn’t 
be so tempted only I am so awfully hard up just now 
— really stony ! ” 

“ Tell me about it,” said Leicestershire kindly — at 
least the words sounded very kind to Beauty’s harassed 
memory of her debts. 

“Well; I’m a little dipped — not very much, you 
know — a mere trifle to you , but it means an awful 
lot to me! I don’t know how I’m ever going to get 
straight. I’m only getting thirty pounds a week, and 
I shan’t get any more for a year.” 

* “ Allonby must be a screw ! You are worth far 
more to him.” 

“ I don’t know — most girls get only thirty pounds 
for lead the first year,” said Beauty honestly. “ But 
somehow it’s so much more expensive being a leading 
lady.” 

“ How much are you in debt ? You don’t mind my 
asking you, do you ? ” 

“ No; I’m not very much in, really. It’s about fifty 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 317 

pounds. But what worries me is that I can’t see how 
I’m to make it less.” 

“ Is that all?” he interrupted, laughing, and bring- 
ing out a pocket-book he began selecting some crisp 
bank-notes. “ Look here ; you must let me put that 
right for you — it’s nothing — ’pon my word I should 
only lose it at cards. Now do — there’s a good little 
girl. I can’t bear to think of your worryin’.” 

“ I’ve lain awake at nights over it,” confessed 
Beauty, with her blue eyes quite tragic. “ But I can’t 
really take this — it isn’t as if we were old friends 
even!” (The morality of Musical Comedy has its 
peculiar code.) 

“ But we’re going to be; yes, now, just as a promise 
that you’ll be pally.” He thrust the crisp notes into 
the new muff, and took the opportunity to crush the 
little hand in his own. Beauty’s fingers closed over 
the money half-reluctantly, half-eagerly. She was 
really more tempted than he could conceive from a 
fair acquaintance with girls of her class, for the debt 
had weighed on her in exact proportion to her early 
training. Sometimes our very virtues are our own 
undoing. Mrs. Darling’s rigid tenets made it an im- 
possibility for her foster-daughter to go easily along 
a road strewn with unpaid bills, as Folly Bird or 
Mrs. Simpson would have done. 

The short day was beginning to close in, and the 
car had turned discreetly out of Piccadilly and was 
running down to the Embankment. Leicestershire’s 
time had come, for his gifts had been paid as a tribute 
beforehand. He said “Beauty!” in a quick short 
whisper, and the hand he had slipped into the big 


3 i8 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

muff tightened again over hers. Then as the traffic 
of St. James’s Street fell behind he pulled the girl 
towards him without further parley and kissed her, 
his lips stinging the cold softness of her face. She 
did not resist this time: the furs held her in a more 
irresistible clasp than he did — but her heart began to 
beat again in a miserable terror. 

“ Are you going to let me give you a good time? ” 
he said, and there was all the contract and the bar- 
gain in the few words. 

“ Yes, if you want to! ” said Beauty Darling with 
a faint sigh. 

He held her head back, to look with gloating eyes 
at the thing that he was buying — just as Beauty 
might look at her furs! — and it seemed that he was 
satisfied. “ We’ll find a dear little fiat for you, shall 
we?” he said, for he was not strikingly original. 
“And everything that little girls like — what?” 
Beauty put her lips up with a tame knowledge that 
she must make some deposit payment for this, and 
felt his hard, wind-bitten cheek beneath her soft lips. 
He was a clean-shaven man, and his face was harsh 
and rough to touch, but she almost preferred it to 
the pressure of his mouth on hers, to which she had 
of course to respond. 

“ How damned pretty you are ! ” he said with a 
sudden fierceness. “ Mustn’t I say that ? What are 
you pulling away for ? ” 

The terror had come over her again irresistibly, 
making her want to start up and spring out of the 
car, to get away from him, to save herself at this last 
moment while there was yet time, she hardly knew 
from what. But she was in the grip of a stronger 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 319 

will than her own, dominated by a personality that 
hypnotized her unconsciously to herself. The cry 
died in her throat — she did not utter that instinctive 
protest, and the moment passed. . . . 

Sir Everton Toff, turning into White’s that after- 
noon about the same hour, found two or three men 
of his own calibre in the card-room, and between the 
rubbers was able to inform them that Hughie Leices- 
tershire was runnin’ Beauty Darling. The statement 
was based on a mere encounter outside Charvonard’s, 
but it was a prophetic truth. 


CHAPTER XIV 


T HE landaulette drew up at Percy Edwards’s, and 
the chauffeur got out of the driving seat to open 
the door for his mistress. She emerged thickly veiled, 
and paused a minute to give the servant some in- 
struction before crossing the Piccadilly pavement and 
entering the jeweller’s, allowing the passing public to 
see that she was a small lady in a long tan coat whose 
obvious cost was duly repeated in the very smart hat 
on her head; but it was only, perhaps, one passing- 
pedestrian who was not to be put off by her hidden 
face, and recognized Miss Beauty Darling of Al- 
lonby’s by some familiarity of outline. If it had not 
been for the veil several would have turned round. 

The March wind was bitterly cold. Beauty shiv- 
ered, and drew her sables closer round her throat as 
she threaded her way through the crossing stream of 
people. Piccadilly was fairly crowded at twelve 
o’clock in March, though it was still Lent. While 
she paused, a gentleman and lady coming out of the 
shop she was going to enter nearly crossed her path ; 
but turning to the right, went on towards the Cor- 
ner, walking briskly and talking busily — at least the 
man was so engaged in conversation that he did not 
look at the actress, and the girl was listening with 
perfect attention if she did not speak. Though they 
had not apparently recognized her, Beauty knew one 
of them at least, for it was Captain Cuthbert Noble, 
320 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 321 

and the lady with him was no doubt Lady Jane, nee 
Lawless, whose marriage to the good-looking soldier 
had flooded the illustrated papers last summer, and 
almost pushed a Musical Comedy girl on to the last 
page. 

. Beauty’s hand trembled a little as she laid it on the 
handle of the door and entered the shop. For almost 
the first time in her life it had come upon her that 
she was not an acquaintance to be desired by every 
single person in the universe, a lady to whom all Lon- 
don clamoured to be introduced — for Beauty’s uni- 
verse was London, sometimes extended for a brief 
while to Paris or Monte Carlo. She was certain that 
Noble had not recognized her; and yet a haunting 
question forced itself upon her mind as to whether 
he would have stopped to speak to her if he had done 
so. There was no exact reason why he should, even 
though he might have raised his hat and greeted her 
as he passed; indeed, the fact that he and his wife 
were obviously going somewhere with a purpose, and 
not simply out for a saunter, made it improbable. 
Yet — would he have introduced her to the girl he 
had married? Would he have introduced her to 
Lady Jane Lawless anyhow, whether he had married 
her or no? (Beauty knew Lady Jane’s brothers very 
intimately, but they had never asked her to meet any 
lady, save her own theatrical associates) — would he 
have made her known to a single one of his female 
relations or friends? If she had married him her- 
self he must have done so, either before or after the 
wedding. But it would have taken the marriage tie 
to effect such an alteration in their intimacy. She 
wished for one surprising moment of savagery that 


322 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

she had become engaged to him herself, if only for 
a time, to force him to cross the Rubicon. 

It was really the first time that the subtleties of 
her position had been brought home to Beauty Darling, 
or perhaps the first time that she had deigned to think 
of them at all. The spoiled child of the public, and 
the feted queen of a certain type of entertainment, 
had no cause or inclination to consider whether she 
would be accepted in the sanctuary of women’s houses 
whose men-kind would throw up their invitations for 
one from herself. Yet it dawned upon her dimly 
that dowdy and dull as it might be to take tea with 
Lady Bannishmann or old Mrs. Noble, it was a thing 
that she was never likely to be asked to do — it had 
the sanctity of the unattainable. Beauty spoke quite 
correctly — with a slight twanging of the vowels in 
her higher tones — she wrote a very good hand, and 
her spelling did credit to the old Foundation at Wan- 
dlebridge. The rest of her education stopped at four- 
teen, but she was not more glaringly ignorant than 
many well-known women, and she had learned to play 
golf and bridge, though rather indifferently. She had 
actually lunched at a restaurant or so with smart 
parties whose host or hostess wanted a notoriety to 
amuse their own friends, and had sat next to Cabinet 
Ministers and met women of another world on an 
equality for the time being. But they were mostly 
married women — not girls; and though they some- 
times asked her out again to other like lunch parties, 
they never admitted her on the footing of a visitor 
to their houses. A very clever conjuror, or a man 
with a new crank, might have been included on the 
same terms. If you are sufficiently advertised in 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 323 

London you can know most people — within certain 
limits; but there will remain a certain circle that you 
cannot know unless you possess the master-key of 
birth and breeding, and there will remain a certain 
intimacy that you can never attain even within the 
most elastic phase of society. Beauty had not been 
“ taken up,” of course, while she was still a chorus 
girl, and as she had slowly come to the front she had 
been somewhat hampered by a lack of introductions. 
When she had burst into the full glare of success she 
had been further overshadowed by her relations with 
the Duke of Leicestershire, for though it was quite 
possible to ignore them, the notoriety of the affair 
would flavour the atmosphere. It had not mattered 
to Beauty herself at all. She was quite satisfied to 
know that she could draw men after her, away from 
the women who would not have received her, and 
she thought her position infinitely preferable to theirs. 
It was only in the moment of meeting Noble, when 
he had consoled himself and gone back to his own 
world for a wife, that she suddenly felt the doors of 
his house closed in her face and resented it all the 
more because she had never considered it possible. 
It was with her tragic eyebrows drawn into a frown 
and a sullen touch upon her fair face that she entered 
the jeweller’s and went up to the counter. She 
wanted the clasp of a diamond bracelet, mended, and 
the bracelet having come from the famous house in 
Piccadilly she had brought it back to them. Beauty 
loved her diamonds. She touched the stones lovingly 
with her small fingers, almost as if they were living 
things, and the assistant, leaning flatteringly over the 
counter (for he knew her by sight), pointed out a 


324 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

new pendant to her notice whose design he was sure 
she would admire! 

“ Yes, it’s perfectly lovely !” said Beauty, with a 
hushed rapture in her voice that would certainly not 
have been there for any other work of art. “ I only 
wish I could have it — a hundred and thirty guineas, 
did you say ? ” 

“ It is well worth the money, madam. The stones 
are of the first quality, and there is not another like 
it in London. Look at the design ! ” 

Beauty sighed and put down the ornament re- 
luctantly. She was afraid she could not hope to get 
it out of Hughie, and he was so tiresome in objecting 
to other men giving her the things that he would not. 
Elizabeth Pytchley had gauged the situation correctly 
when she said that Leicestershire played the bulldog 
warning off the curs. The discontent in Beauty’s face 
had deepened when she left the shop again and 
emerged into the bright sunshine and cutting wind 
of March Piccadilly. 

It was to be a morning of encounters. As Beauty 
came out of the left-hand door of the double shop a 
gentleman emerged from the right-hand door, passed 
her, and walked down Piccadilly in the same direc- 
tion that the Nobles had taken. He had not looked 
at her, any more than Captain Noble had done, and 
in any case she had dropped her veil again; but she 
stood for a minute fingering the door-handle with 
feverish hands, while her memory turned dizzily to 
a steep descent of years, and went down, down, to 
a little girl in an apple-tree, and a small suburban 
cottage. . . . Those high, stooping shoulders, as 
though he still carried an artist’s pack upon them! 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 325 

That evil face, darkened still more with the shadow 
of intervening years ill-spent! That large hand with 
the delicate fingers that wrought miracles of sense! 

— she had seen it rest a moment on the frame of the 
door as he closed it, and could have shrieked aloud 
in the shock of her tingling nerves. . . . The passers- 
by only saw a tall, elderly man, walking rather swiftly 
along the pavement into distance, recognized perhaps 
by one or two gentlemen as the degraded member of 
a well-known family. But after ten years clear of 
his presence, Beauty Darling shrank as if it were only 
last night that she had fled from Trevor Guy. What 
ominous fate had brought him near her now, in the 
stress of her overwrought mind and body? She 
could almost have thought it an obsession, an hal- 
lucination, but for the physical reality of her laboured 
breath. 

Her motor had been forced to move into the middle 
of the road instead of waiting at the kerb, to make 
way for other traffic. The chauffeur saw her at once, 
however, and raising his hand, waited for an oppor- 
tunity to cut the line and reach the pavement again. 
As Beauty stood on the kerb she looked up and saw 
a motor-omnibus coming up Piccadilly and the next 
instant it had stopped opposite her in a block. She 
was thinking of the pendant for the moment, worry- 
ing almost feverishly to feel it on her white neck — 
and then her reluctant mind turned to Trevor Guy 

— so that her glance at the bus was mechanical. The 
next instant it had awakened to consciousness of two 
well-known faces, for the man and the woman sitting 
on the back seat were Michael Phayre and Meta 
Chumleigh. 


326 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

They did not see her any more than the Nobles or 
Guy; but either Beauty’s senses were sharpened to- 
day, or something in the proximity of the two figures 
explained itself. They were laughing and talking., 
and even at a distance Beauty could more than suspect 
the smile in Michael’s blue eyes. He had often 
looked at her like that in the kindness of his great 
heart, though had she been able to see him closer 
just now she might have found something more in 
his face than she had ever brought there. The sus- 
picion that was certainty, however, was enough to send 
a wave of such passionate resentment over her that 
it left her trembling. She felt as she looked at the 
two that she had lost Michael just at the moment when 
she most needed him, and that a mysterious dread lying 
dormant in her heart had only been endurable because 
she knew subconsciously that he was still to be relied 
upon. In the sudden sense of loss of him she almost 
shrieked again, and the surge of her emotions fright- 
ened herself. This other girl, who had posed as her 
friend, had stolen him ; he was no longer there, in the 
background of her life, the one stable thing left her to 
lean on in trouble. She would be the second in his 
life now, instead of having the first right to make de- 
mands upon him. For though Beauty had never loved 
Michael Phayre, and did not love him now, she had 
been quite ready to grasp and lay hold on the true affec- 
tion he gave her and the self-sacrifice that her service 
entailed. Such liking as she had given him had been 
entirely selfish, and he had accepted it with a patience 
that was almost divine, as the best that she had to offer^ 
as yet. — 

The omnibus moving on freed her own motor, whicli 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 327 

came over to the pavement, and the girl said “ Home ! ” 
to the chauffeur in a queer, choked voice, and getting 
into the welcome dusk of the carriage, buried her face 
in her hands and sobbed recklessly. It was well that 
she had put on that long thick veil, for her eyelids 
were swollen and stained by the time she reached her 
own flat, and her face disfigured by her unaffected 
crying. She felt so sorry for herself! Michael had 
deserted her just when he should have stood by her 
and helped her through, and she reproached him bit- 
terly in her thoughts, making no note of the years of 
patient friendship which should have brought him re- 
lease from obligation, to ask at least for a little love 
and happiness on his own account. 

How quietly contented they had looked ! How 
mean and unfair it seemed to Beauty Darling that Meta 
should have valued and accepted the thing that she 
herself would have refused ! For she still shuddered 
to think of the poverty and struggle that life with 
Michael would have meant years ago, and even the 
dubious outlook of it to-day, compared to the luxury 
of her own surroundings when she reached home. It 
was a very pretty flat, and it satisfied all Beauty’s ma- 
terial aspirations. She flung aside her furs for Janet 
to collect and take charge of, and sat down to a dainty 
lunch which somehow she could hardly eat. 

“ You've been crying again ! ” said the maid 
brusquely, when she saw her. “If you go on like this 
you’ll be a rag to-night. It’s a mercy your eyes soon 
recover. . . 

“ I can’t help it ! ” said Beauty, with an hysterical 
sob. “I’ve been so upset, Janet — I’ve seen Mr. 
Phayre with that girl Meta Chumleigh ! ” — Beauty had 


328 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

never learned to keep anything that affected her from 
her maid (unless it were something that she was afraid 
Janet might censure), who treated her as such natures 
invariably treat those weaker than themselves, partly 
as an equal, partly still as a valued asset, and to be 
guarded as such. 

“ Well? ” 

“ I believe he is going to marry her ! ” 

“The best thing he can do, I’m sure!” said Janet 
sharply. “ And I hope they’ll keep themselves to 
themselves and not be overrunning us here. You 
haven’t been crying over that, surely ! ” 

“ I think it’s a damned shame that they haven’t told 
me!” 

“ They’ll tell you fast enough — when they want a 
wedding-present. Do eat your lunch, and don’t go 
drinking that whisky and soda till you’ve done. You’ll 
make yourself worse.” 

But Beauty could not eat, though Janet, really wor- 
ried, tried to feed her with sandwiches of foie gras 
and her favourite sweets. Finally she made her a cup 
of strong beef-tea, and having bathed her eyes and 
undressed her, made her lie down on her bed, and 
watched her fall into an uneasy sleep — a sleep in 
which she moaned and cried out sometimes. 

“ I suppose it is true — though I won’t let her be- 
lieve it yet awhile,” said Janet, with her shrewd eyes 
on the heaving breast. “ I wonder what we are to do ! 
— and how he will take it. . . .” 

Beauty woke about five o’clock, somewhat rested, 
and the maid advised her going into the drawing-room 
for tea, though she would rather have lain still and 
taken more stimulant if it had been given to her. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 329 

Janet had her reasons, however, and would administer 
neither drugs nor alcohol. She arranged the loose 
curls artistically, to soften the strained, white face that 
showed sharper angles to-day, and dressed Beauty in 
a white tea-gown, a garment whose silk and chiffon 
made her look extraordinarily young and childish. 
There was no colour in her face, but the tear-stains 
were gone, and if her eyes were heavy they were no 
less beautiful. The tragic touch had reached its per- 
fection in her little face as she walked languidly into 
the drawing-room and caught sight of herself in a long 
mirror facing the door, pausing from habit to see how 
she looked, for to Beauty Darling half the world was 
herself and the other half the people who saw her. A 
minute later Janet was startled by a cry that summoned 
her to follow quickly. 

“Janet! Janet! Come here! Come here. Where 
did it come from? Who put it here?” 

The maid ran into the room in real haste, to find 
her mistress gazing with horrified eyes at a picture 
hanging on the wall over Beauty’s own favourite 
couch. It was so placed that the electric light fell full 
upon it, though the day was drawing in. Beauty had 
not seen it when she entered, until she turned on the 
switch to light the mirror. 

“ Why, that came this morning, while you were 
out,” Janet explained. “ I had a message from the 
Duke himself that it was to be hung there at once — 
as a surprise for you. My! but it is like you, isn’t 
it?” 

' It was the original picture for which Beauty had 
sat years ago to Trevor Guy, the famous “ Spring ” 
bought by a big picture-dealer, from which many re- 


330 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

productions had been made. How Leicestershire had 
become possessed of it Beauty did not know; he must 
have paid a considerable sum to induce the dealer 
to part with it. But it seemed that Fate, with a gri- 
mace, had brought it up out of the shadows of the past 
to thrust it upon Beauty Darling at a moment when she 
was most vulnerable. Coming after the encounter 
with Guy himself in Piccadilly there was something 
that seemed supernatural about it, as if the curse of his 
personality had fallen upon her again, precursing dis- 
aster. She stood with her body thrust a little for- 
ward, and her hands gripped behind her as always in 
moments of distress, peering into the representation of 
her own child- face with a ghastly intentness. Janet 
looked from one to the other curiously. 

“ Was it painted from you? ” she said, sharply cu- 
rious. “ You must have been a kid.” 

The round, beautiful face framed in the apple blos- 
soms looked out at the Beauty Darling of to-day with 
unflinching, indifferent blue eyes. There was hardly 
any character in it, for there was no experience; but 
the shadowy possibility of tragedy in the moulding 
of the brows had received a terrible realization in the 
face of the girl looking at it with such visible repug- 
nance and horror. She did not answer Janet’s ques- 
tion. She did not even hear it. Out of the past it 
seemed to her that Trevor Guy’s infinitely evil face was 
thrust closer to hers than the picture — closer than it 
had been in Piccadilly — and that his magical hands 
were stroking her knees as she sat in the apple-tree, 
giving her her first sexual sensation, the most vivid 
physical pleasure she had ever known. . . . 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 331 

“ Hark ! there's the bell ! ” said Janet suddenly, seiz- 
ing her roughly by the shoulder and shaking her. 
“ Pull yourself together! The Duke’s in town, I sup- 
pose, and if this is he you can’t look like that — you 
mustn’t let him see you like that ! ” 

Words failed her to describe the curious effect that 
Beauty Darling’s expression and attitude were having 
even on herself, but she felt the urgent necessity of 
breaking the tension. With the whole force of her 
will she pulled the younger, slighter girl round, and 
almost threw her on the couch, banking the cushions 
behind her, and arranging the splendid silk folds of her 
gown before she rushed out of the room to find out if 
her prognostication as to the visitor were true. Beauty 
lay where she had been put, half raised on her pillows, 
her blue eyes gazing out of her wonderful white face 
like two great jewels, and over her head the mocking, 
meretricious picture of that other Beauty Darling called 
“ Spring.” 

She had not moved when a familiar step sounded in 
the passage outside, and Leicestershire’s voice said, 
“ May I come in ? ” 

He came in, without waiting for permission — a 
tall, strong man with a face bitten by wind and weather 
in the hunting county of England, and keen eyes that 
went at once to the exquisite figure on the couch under 
the la'mplight — the figure that made the centre of 
his picture as he entered, the girl who belonged to him 
more abjectly than if she had borne his name and gone 
her own way, as his wife did. 

“Well, darlin’ baby, how are you?” he said, bend- 
ing over Beauty, and taking her face in his hard, cold 


332 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

hands. “ It’s a nippin’ wind to-day. Been out ? ” 

“ Yes,” she said breathlessly, nestling her soft head 
in his breast, for his emphatic presence was something 
at least to cling to in the nightmare of strange fears 
that was gradually closing in on her. “ I didn’t know 
you were in town, Hughie.” 

“ Knew I should come, eh? After your letter! ” 

"I — wanted to see you — I felt I must ! ” Her 
throat was dry, and she found she could barely speak 
now that it came to facing her fear. She forgot to 
make even a conventional apology for bringing him to 
town — indeed, she hardly thought of it, the necessity 
seemed so great to her. Leicestershire sat down by 
the tea-table and helped himself, domestically, as if not 
very much concerned with her urgency. 

“ What’s the matter, old pet? ” 

She did not answer the question, save by another. 

“ Hughie, where did you get that picture ? ” raising 
her hand to point above her head. 

“ Bought it because it was you. I suppose it is 
you ? Where did you know that rotten bounder, 
Guy?” 

“ He took a room in the cottage where I was living 
with my foster-mother, and painted the neighbour- 
hood.” Beauty rather liked the reference to her “ fos- 
ter ’’-mother, which seemed to balance the humbleness 
of the cottage. But she did not want to go into the 
question of Trevor Guy. 

“ Have you ever seen him since ? ” The bulldog 
growled a warning in the bully’s voice. 

“ No — never.” She dared not add “ Thank God ! ” 
nor yet mention that glimpse to-day, which he might 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 333 

not have believed had been so much the sport of 
chance. 

“ Well — he’s not fit for any woman to know.” 
Had she been finer of hearing she might have added to 
herself “ Even such as you,” but Beauty was not very 
intuitive, fortunately for her own feelings. 

“ I don’t care much for the picture anyway,” she 
said, after a minute. “It’s a beastly thing! I shall 
have it taken down.” 

“ No, you won’t ! ” he retorted, showing his teeth in 
a broad smile, so that he looked like a good-tempered 
dog — a bulldog none the less. “You’ll jolly well 
leave it there, because I like it.” 

“ But I don’t like it ! ” said Beauty, in a burst of 
pettishness. She was bound to assert herself for once, 
though as a rule it was Hugh who ruled the roost. 
She did not intend to have it so — she intended to be 
as imperious during her reign as Barbara Sinclair or 
Cherry Bough to their respective protectors. But 
Beauty lacked the instinct of self-preservation as much 
as that of commerce. She might cry like a spoilt child 
— she could never rule like an autocrat. It was a 
proof of this that now Folly Bird was Lady Hermal, 
and Mona Morley engaged to a young Guardsman, 
while even Barbara Sinclair had married Jack Simp- 
son years ago; but all that Beauty had accomplished 
was to be the mistress of a man who was notoriously 
unfaithful to his women. Leicestershire did not even 
pretend to give in to all her whims, but broke her to 
his will as carelessly as if the tie between them had been 
final. A man will generally make concessions to his 
mistress, at least in the earlier days of their connec- 


334 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

tion, to keep her with him ; but Leicestershire had been 
astute enough to find out very early in the game that 
he held the winning cards of a stronger will and de- 
termination. In the present case he meant the picture 
to remain where it was, and he did not trouble him- 
self for the unreasoning repugnance in Beauty’s rest- 
less eyes, or even her feeble stand against it. 

“ But, Hughie, I can’t bear the thing — it worries 
me just now. I shan’t come into this room if it stays. 
Oh, do take it down and turn it with its face to the 
wall ! ” She put her hand childishly over her face and 
almost whimpered. 

“ Don’t be a little fool ! ” said Leicestershire good- 
humouredly. “ What’s come over you ? ” He sat 
down beside her on the couch, making room for his big 
person by the simple process of pushing her little body 
aside, and took her hands away. “ What’s all this 
rot?” he said, leaning forward to look deep into her 
eyes. “ What was your letter about ? ” 

“ I tried to tell you. . . 

“ I only read half of it. My dear child, you can’t 
expect me to wade through all that nonsense. I 
couldn’t make head or tail of it. Come ! tell us straight 
out — what is the matter? ” 

The laces rose and fell on the girl’s breast in a sigh 
that was half a sob, and seemed to break from her 
body without her will. It was the whirlpool of life 
catching her in its current and spinning her round 
and round like an eddying straw. “ I’m so afraid, 
Hughie ! ” she panted. “ I’m almost sure — I can’t go 
on like this ! ” Her voice rose almost shrilly, and her 
eyes glazed. 

“ Are you afraid you are going to have a kid? ” said 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 335 

Leicestershire slowly. He always made plain state- 
ments, and he saw no horror in the thing, tiresome 
though it might be, such as paralysed the words on 
Beauty's lips. “ That’s a bit of a bore. But I expect 
you’re all wrong — you’ve worked yourself up to 
this.” 

“ Oh, yes, I hope so ! You think it’s not possible, 
don’t you ? You think I’ve fancied it ? ” She clung to 
his hard hands as if they were a literal rescue. 

“ Well, it’s not impossible,” said Leicestershire prac- 
tically. “ Still, it’s very likely to be a mistake. Have 
you seen a doctor ? ” 

“ No — I didn’t dare — I didn’t want to know.” 

“ Oh, come, that’s rot again. You must know, one 
way or the other. You’d better send for a doctor and 
find out. It will be a weight off your mind if he tells 
you it isn’t.” 

“ But if it is? . . .” 

He felt the little hands holding his own tremble, and 
misinterpreted the cause. To his mind Beauty was 
very naturally afraid of bringing a nameless child into 
the world who might be abandoned by him and its 
maintenance cast on her at some future time. Girls 
in her position had to look out for themselves, and she 
was a bit hysterical. But what he did not understand 
was the unbalanced horror of childbirth that had al- 
ways possessed Beauty’s mind. Perhaps if she had 
had a guarded girlhood that had ended in matrimony, 
to bear children might have come as the natural course 
of things, but she had been associated from the first 
with the warning held up to all girls of her class of 
“ getting caught ” ; and then had come the practical 
illustration of Folly Bird, and the constant talk about 


336 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

such things that went on amongst other girls. More- 
over, some heritage from her own birth may have 
darkened her mind from the mother who must in her 
turn have dreaded the coming of the child she had 
desperately abandoned. The unknown pangs, the ill- 
concealed shame of her position, the bringing forth of 
some bastard thing never to be quite openly acknowl- 
edged, made pregnancy the one violent emotion of 
Beauty Darling’s nature, and that emotion was one of 
ungovernable fear. 

“ But if it is? . . she said, and could not finish 
her sentence. 

“ Well, if it is you’ll have to go abroad, little woman, 
or into the country for a time, and be reported as 
‘resting.’ Others girls do it pretty often — what?” 

“There’s the new piece coming on in January — I 
couldn’t be out of that,” she said wildly, fighting every 
inch of ground for release from the inevitable fate 
that seemed to be closing in on her, she hardly knew 
how. 

“ You’d have to if it were too near. When do you 
expect — ” 

“ I don’t know — I know nothing. It isn’t cer- 
tain.” 

“ Well, you’d probably be able to play for a time, 
and then say you had broken down. You can go on 
till it begins to show, y’know, and then I’ll take you 
away and see that it’s as easy as possible for you.” 

“ Oh, Hughie, I can’t! ” The palms of her hands 
were moist, and the great blue of her eyes darkened to 
black. 

“ Don’t be in such a funk, Beauty. Buck up ! — 
you’re not going to die of it. You’re healthy enough. 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 337 

!And look here, I’ll give you my word to see that the 
kid is all right.” It seemed a miracle, but his face 
softened. There was something that was almost a 
startling contrast between the two — the woman’s in- 
tolerable shrinking, the shadow of a sentiment in the 
man’s complaisance. “ I won’t back out of my share 
of the responsibility,” he said, with all the robust ac- 
ceptance of his race. 

“ It’s not that, I tell you ! ” — The girl half rose from 
her recumbent position, and thrust her hands out as if 
warding off a blow. “ I won’t have it — I won’t ! Let 
me go to Leyman and get rid of it.” 

“ Leyman?” 

“ Yes — he’s in Harold Street. Heaps of girls go. 
There’s no fuss and no bother. He will get rid of it 
for me.” 

Had Beauty been Folly Bird or Cherry Bough she 
would never have asked permission. She would have 
gone to Leyman first, and if it had been necessary to 
confess, would have done so afterwards, taking it for 
granted that the father of an undesired child would be 
thankful for its destruction. But again, Beauty lacked 
the initiative and the nerve to act for herself; she 
wanted some one to assist her, almost to back her up. 
And to her extremity of despair she did not find in 
Leicestershire the acquiescence for which she looked. 

“ No ! ” he said at once, and the frown had come 
back to his eyes. “ It won’t do. You might get into 
some mess, and there would be a deuce of a row, and 
talk, and one would hardly be able to buy it off. No, 
if you have got into this condition you must face it 
out.” Then seeing the incomprehensible fear in her 
face, he put it down to hysteria, and spoke soothingly. 

22 


338 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“ You might do yourself some injury, my pet, and I 
can’t risk that. Better be natural, and have the child, 
rather than an illegal operation.” 

She looked into his face, her wits sharpened by 
her desperation. “Hughie! You can’t want me to 
have a child ! You don’t seem to mind — you almost 
like it!” 

There was the pause of her amazement, and then 
suddenly he caught her up in his arms with a flushed 
face above her at which she stared in still growing- 
dread. “ Well, if we do have a kid, it will be a new 
experience, damn it ! ” he said in a rough, choked voice. 
“ You’re too beautiful not to be a mother — you ought 
to have babies. If a man gave you half-a-dozen chil- 
dren he’d be excused ! ” He held her hard against 
his chest, his breath coming quickly and falling hot 
upon the curly head thrown back against his shoulder. 
The paternal instinct is no less dangerous than the ma- 
ternal, and very much less to be calculated upon. 

Beauty glanced at his eyes — the lawless eyes of 
elemental manhood, strong to impress its stamp and 
image upon a coming race — and there she read her 
doom. . . . 


CHAPTER XV 


A DRESS rehearsal of Musical Comedy frequently 
begins at two o’clock in the day and lasts until 
two o’clock the next morning. This, however, in- 
cludes the relays of meals brought in by the Dressers, 
for nobody leaves the theatre to eat or sleep until the 
awful period is over, and it generally seems as if every- 
thing were so wrong at the last minute that the first 
night must be a fiasco — the limes are hopelessly 
mixed, and the theatre rings with the repetition of airs 
which will later on be popular with half London — 
those horribly familiar airs that seem to haunt a House 
during the run of a successful piece! 

Beauty Darling was in the second year of her con- 
tract with Allonby when the “ Gay Dogs ” was taken 
off to make room for “ The Transformagist,” and was 
drawing forty pounds a week as salary. This, how- 
ever, was much less than the well-known Comedians, 
for Sam Mackintosh had taken sixty pounds in the 
“ Gay Dogs,” and when he had a difference of opinion 
with Edgar Allonby and left he made room for Gideon 
St. Gotherd, who transferred his popular services from 
Nolly O’Donnovan (manager of the Satyr) to his 
rival’s theatre, for which boon Allonby had to pay 
him a hundred pounds a week. St. Gotherd was at 
the very head of his profession in public favour, and 
was regarded as inimitable and a draw not only for 
the stalls but for the pit and gallery. His goggling 
eyes and monkey manners were the exaggerated 
339 


340 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

standard for a certain set of young men, who (it 
is to be prayed!) imitated him unconsciously. He 
was nearly as much in request as Beauty herself, 
even on photo day — which is a whole day given up 
to the Press photographers and those engaged by the 
Management, who swarm over the stage and stalls 
and erect long and longer ladders for their work, 
while for a space the air is full of flashlights and 
strange cries of “ Now the group!” “ Now the 
dresses ! ” which keep the cast busy forming and re- 
forming. Photo day occurs before the dress rehearsal, 
and the whole cast is called, and make up sufficiently 
for photography. Beauty was taken from near and 
far, in her new part, posed as the central figure amongst 
the rest of the London Company, and taken in every 
conceivable position that could illustrate her stage 
character — swinging round in Gideon St. Gotherd’s 
arms by a lucky snap, balanced on a ladder while a 
horrible sense of giddiness made her sick (she had 
not been well of late), and the rose-covered walls of 
her cottage seemed too flimsy to support her ; or lying 
asleep in a particularly realistic bed which drew forth 
coarse comments from “ Giddy Goat,” always most 
facetious over the unmentionable. 

“ Don’t be so filthy ! Your mind’s a sewer, Giddy ! ” 
said the girl with exasperated force at last, shaking 
off the last of his innuendoes with a flushed face. It 
was not by Beauty’s choice that she was so closely 
associated in the new piece with Mr. St. Gotherd, 
but it was certainly to his own satisfaction. Years 
since he had felt and demonstrated an attraction to- 
wards Beauty as a little chorus girl, but circum- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 341 

stances had intervened, and the fulfilment of such 
beginnings she had at least escaped. Now the swing 
of the pendulum had caused their revolving fates 
to touch again, and Beauty was as usual the help- 
less sport of circumstances. She felt she loathed St. 
Gotherd with a repulsion intensified by the quickened 
life within her, for it seemed as if all her senses were 
awakened to unusual activity ; but she lacked the initia- 
tive to avoid him. 

There had been of late an increasing fancy for dan- 
gerous dances, movements of which were better suited 
to acrobats than mere girls trained to steps. At the 
Modern Music Hall Fannie Carlos — once Our Fannie 
of the Lilliput Troupe — was giving a special turn 
with her husband, who was a professional of some 
standing, and flung his own body about, or his wife’s, 
as freely as a conjuror does his balls. Their Hang- 
man’s Dance was the talk of the hour, and all the 
lesser ballets at other Houses were copying them in a 
feebler degree. At the Satyr Mona Morley was nightly 
balanced on two men’s shoulders while they revolved 
beneath her, and Gertie Grierson had had a fall at 
the Sovereignty. The new fashion was marked in 
the piece at Allonby’s by Beauty Darling lying back 
in her dance with St. Gotherd until her hands met 
round his neck and he caught her under the knees, 
whirling the two of them round with a last effort, 
and by force of the movement keeping them in rota- 
tion until he could let go of her, and the girl swung 
them both by the clasp of her arms. If Beauty had 
not been a small woman St. Gotherd could not have 
balanced her in the movement which followed, for the 


342 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

girl’s body carried them gradually across the stage and 
off at the “ O. P.” side, where three or four men 
stopped their impetus. 

It would have been strictly against Leicestershire’s 
orders that Beauty should undertake this dance and 
practise it, if he had at all realized the risk in her pres- 
ent state of health; but as he knew no more of the 
play than she chose to tell him, it had not been actually 
forbidden by him. Hughes would have no one in to 
rehearsal, and to attempt to gain entrance to that 
holy of holies was to incur the wrath of ten larger 
men impact in his slight frame. Beauty was thankful 
for this, for she was afraid of refusing any exertion 
that another girl might have undertaken. Allonby 
would no doubt have been considerate, but the fear of 
the twitter of gossip in the theatre was as a war-drum 
in her ears. — 

“ Beauty Darling can’t do the swings with Giddy 
Goat! ” — “ Well, we all know why! ” — “ Beauty Dar- 
ling daren’t risk a fall just now — my word ! but that’s 
evident enough ! ” — “ Girls, did you see ? They’ve cut 
the swings for Beauty Darling! Had to! She’s in 
for it this time ! ” — 

Even though she knew herself now that there was 
no escape, it seemed to bring the dreaded thing so 
near. She could cheat herself a little longer if she 
used her limbs and her body like other girls, regard- 
less of what might follow. And supposing it did fol- 
low — supposing something happened — it might avert 
it after all! Deep down in her cowering heart the 
maddened hope existed that a slip or an untoward 
movement might do for her what Leyman of Harold 
Street was not to be allowed to do. She did not think 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 343 

of the consequences to herself — she was past that; 
or perhaps she was not wise or far-sighted enough to 
know. Other girls had escaped, with little or no ill- 
ness to speak of. Beauty saw only the chances of es- 
cape, and looked no farther. 

The new piece, “ The Trans formagist,” was an elab- 
orate production, and had taken many weeks to re- 
hearse owing to the illusions introduced into the second 
act. The Comedian, Jester, played the name-part, and 
possessed the uncomfortable power of turning people 
into animals, vegetables, or minerals, in full sight of 
the audience. This was done by the aid of looking- 
glasses ; but to get the effect perfect had been a work 
of much labour, and even at the eleventh hour the 
wearied cast were put back and back again to rehearse 
the transformations, until the language of the lime- 
light man upon the occasion became a classic. The 
footlights, or “ floats,” had three coloured glasses to 
turn on — red, green, and white or yellow — which 
were worked from the back by switches, and of course 
the regular limes were controlled by the unfortunate 
being who occupied a confined space up in the flies — 
those platforms that run round three sides of the stage 
— and from which he cursed and was cursed. By 
five o’clock every one was jaded and full of nerves, 
and Sydney Hughes’s voice dismissing the chorus came 
as the benediction of an angel : 

“ Tea is provided in the dressing-room — I shall 
want you, Miss Darling.” 

“Can’t I go and have tea?” said Beauty, aghast. 
The progress of the play had been stopped for Jester 
to chase St. Gotherd round a rose-garden maze with a 
magic powder. As soon as the powder was sprinkled 


344 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

over him he became a huge cauliflower in the middle 
of the stage, and the transformation was not yet suc- 
cessful. But Beauty did not see why she should be 
detained for this. 

“ Your legs show, dear boy — damn it; your legs 
show ! ” exploded Hughes, dancing up and down with 
his hands on the back of the seat in front of him, as 
he surveyed the failure from the stalls. 

“ Crawl a little more under that rose-tree,” advised 
Jester, joining Beauty Darling in the wings. “ Hot, 
isn’t it, dear?” he said as he mopped his face. He 
had the sad expression of a clown in private life, and 
his mirth-provoking grin seemed always left upon the 
stage — it was certainly not on his face when he 
reached the wings. Beauty liked him; they had al- 
ways been friends. “ This running about sweats it 
off us ! ” he said, sitting down cross-legged by the side 
of the chair that some one had put for Beauty, and 
that Hughes had not yet ordered away. “ Oh, look 
at old Giddy ! ” — for St. Gotherd in his zeal had 
tumbled backwards out of sight, and brought down a 
mass of rose garlands which half buried him. “ Gather 
ye rosebuds while ye may, Giddy ! You’re in a worse 
spider’s web than before.” 

Beauty broke into an hysterical giggle, and could 
not stop it even as she met Hughes’s wrathful 
eyes. He was furious, and let fly at every one in 
general. 

“ Get up, you garden ass ! — Damn it, don’t pull the 
scenery down. — Miss Darling, I won’t have that noise 
in the wings. — Mr. Jester, get to your right entrance 
to begin again. Damn it! I will have this right, if you 
have to stay here all the damned night ! ” 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 345 

“ Why can’t I go and have tea ? ” said Beauty quer- 
ulously. “ I’ve nothing to do in this.” 

“ 1 shall want you in a minute ; you must wait. Mr. 
St. Gotherd, keep more down the stage — more down 
stage, do you hear ? Do you hear ? Damn it ! do you 
hear f ” 

“ Yes, I hear,” said St. Gotherd, who was rather 
white, and looked nasty about the eyes. “ I can’t get 
farther down stage or I shall block Miss Darling’s en- 
trance.” 

“ Well, block it then, and let her get out of the 
way ! Damn it, dear boy, you must keep clear of the 
cauliflower as you vanish, or you’ll be behind it for 
the rest of the scene. Now, Miss Darling — Miss 
Darling ! ” 

The lead, Oscar Bennett, had come round to the 
wings with a cup of tea for Miss Darling, good-natur- 
edly meaning to dodge the Stage-Manager’s eye. 
Beauty had turned her head to thank him with real 
gratitude, and did not hear her cue. The next instant 
she was nearly drowned in a torrent of words. 

“ Miss Darling, will you attend? Take that tea 
away, Bennett. — Damn it ! I won’t have anybody eat 
or drink till this scene’s right. Come down stage, 
Miss Darling — no, right down! Now, Mr. St. Goth- 
erd, time that exit. — I’ll keep you here till we ring 
up to-morrow if you don’t attend. Damn it! not that 
way — come round the rose-bush. Stop the orchestra ! 
Take it through again. — Now, Miss Darling! ” — His 
voice rose to palpitating rage as he handled his cast 
and drove them like an unruly team. 

“ Do you want Miss Darling to break her neck by 
falling over me as she passes behind the rose-bush ? ” 


346 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

demanded St. Gotherd heatedly. Tempers were wear- 
ing thin, and the cast was getting stale with repeti- 
tion. 

“ I don’t care where she goes behind the rose-bush. 
You may both fall together as long as the audi- 
ence don’t see you ! — Damn it ! where are those 
limes? ” 

“ Come along,” said St. Gotherd roughly, crushing 
Beauty into the scenery as he passed her. “ Hughes 
would risk our lives to get us out of the way ! ” He 
leered into the girl’s face, tried to kiss her with the 
sceneshifters grinning as an appreciative audience, and 
slipped off at the prompt side. 

Beauty entered up stage, and came down to the 
cauliflower, singing. Her shriek at sight of it was in 
the part, but it sounded a trifle too natural. 

“ Don’t make a tragedy of it, Miss Darling,” said 
Hughes grimly. “ This isn’t Shakespeare ! Yes, 
that’s better. You can get past all right now, St. 
Gotherd?” 

“ Oh, I can injure myself and Miss Darling as 
well — if that’s what you want! ’’ retorted St. Gotherd, 
whose temper had gone. 

“ You must be able to pass without the audience 
seeing — that is what I want ! ” — Hughes’s voice was 
deadly. He had never liked Beauty, and St. Goth- 
erd’s loose tongue irritated his nerves. He would keep 
them at it to pay them both. “ Go back to that chase 
round the maze — Jester kcome along — St. Gotherd ! 
take it up from the line, ‘ I won’t be a Spring Onion 
if I have to change — ’ ” 

“I’ll give you beans!” shouted Jester, starting in 
pursuit, and the scene continued as before, with the 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 347 

cauliflower illusion and St. Gotherd wriggling off the 
stage. Beauty sat in the wings sulkily and awaited 
her cue. 

“ It’s like a pantomime ! ” she said. 

She was very tired, mentally and physically, by 
seven o’clock, when the Company were allowed an 
hour off for dinner. Only her youth could have stood 
the strain, and a few more years would crack her voice 
and sharpen her face if it did not lead to champagne. 
She would have taken drugs now if she could have 
got them, but she needed Janet’s help, and Janet was 
too wise to allow her such vices at present. She looked 
at herself critically in the glass of her dressing-room, 
and it seemed to her overwrought imagination that 
already — already — the slight hips had thickened, 
and there was a horrible maturity about her figure. 
An intense depression had seized upon her, and when 
Janet brought her some dinner — for she could not 
leave the theatre for it — she found her sobbing before 
the glass with her face in her hands. 

“ My word ! What on earth’s the matter with 
you ? ” said the maid quickly, but her sharp glance 
told that she knew well enough. “ Has Hughes been 
cutting up rough? No? Mr. Allonby been round? 
What is it, then ? ” She did not wait for an answer, 
but put the tray down beside her mistress. “ You must 
eat something — you’re only overtired. Come along 
— you’ve got all the rest of the rehearsal to sing 
through yet.” 

But for once Beauty was not to be bullied into com- 
mon sense, and Janet began to be really afraid of a 
breakdown. The girl must get through the show to- 
morrow night, even though she gave in immediately 


348 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

afterwards. Had they over-estimated her strength? 
Was her coming motherhood really so far advanced 
as to make the part a physical impossibility to her? 
The Duke was not in town, or Janet, at her wits’ end, 
would almost have sent him a warning that there might 
be a fiasco to-morrow night, but he was not able to 
see the first performance, and would come up a week 
or so later. Janet coaxed, and scolded, and soothed 
for twenty minutes before she could induce her charge 
to eat and drink, and then it was by no means a satis- 
factory meal. 

“ I’ll have to get you a cup of soup or bovril or some- 
thing during the next act,” she said, half distracted. 
“ It’s simply silly to go on like this. Who’s there ? 
Oh, it’s Mr. St. Gotherd! You can’t come in, sir. 
Miss Darling’s resting.” 

“ Let me speak to her for a minute, there’s a good 
girl ! ” said the familiar voice persuasively. Giddy 
Goat’s voice was rather attractive in speaking, though 
he sang hoarse. Janet lowered her own in answer. 

“ I wish you could persuade her to eat, sir ! She’ll 
break down if she doesn’t, and I can’t get her to see 
reason to-night.” 

“Let me come and try.” — He pushed past Janet 
before she had decided to allow him, and walked up to 
the couch where Beauty was lying, white and flaccid, 
with closed eyes. “ Beauty ! ” he said, leaning down 
over the listless figure. “ Have you had anything to 
drink?” 

“Yes, sir, quite enough — I got her some whisky 
and soda,” Janet broke in. She rarely picked her 
words. 

“ Go and get me another glass, and some sand- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 349 

wiches. There are plenty in my dressing-room/’ St. 
Gotherd said without raising his eyes. Janet left 
them unwillingly. She was paid to act as watch-dog. 

The minute she was gone St. Gotherd bent lower 
over the girl to bring his lips close to her ear, and spoke 
softly. 

“ Beauty, I won’t leave go of you in the swing-dance 
to-night — you needn’t be afraid ! ” 

She opened her eyes wide, and their blue was like 
the night sky, with a star in each. The fear in them 
seemed to have dried the tears. 

“ What do you mean ? ” she asked, with a harsh 
breath. 

“ I know you are afraid — I will hold you to-night. 
You needn’t swing only by your arms.” 

“ Mr. Hughes will see ! ” 

“ I have settled Hughes.” 

She drew a tortured breath, like a sob. “ Thanks ! ” 
she said, with a pitiful effort to speak naturally. “ I’m 
awfully tired, and it does make you feel rather sick. 
You’re a good sort, Giddy! ” 

“ But you must do it to-morrow night — ” 

“ Oh, I’ll be all right to-morrow — ” 

“ Now, will you buck up and eat and drink some- 
thing?” 

“ I’ll try. . . .” 

“ There’s a good girl. I give you my word I’ll hold 
you safe to-night — if in return you’ll . . .” 

He bent closer and whispered. 

“I don’t think I dare, Giddy — Hughie would kill 
me if he knew ! ” 

“Rot! How is he to know? He’s not in town.” 

“ Janet.—” 


350 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

“ We’ll get rid of Janet somehow. Don’t fret now 
— I’m not going to rush you. I’ve waited six years — 
I can wait a little longer.” 

“ Six years ! — When I was at the Satyr ? ” 

“ Yes — if you hadn’t left.” 

“ All right — I’ll see. Only don’t leave go of me 
to-night in the swings ! ” . . . 

She was fighting for life itself, though how he had 
divined her terror of that moment when she swung 
helpless on her own muscles she did not know. Or- 
dinarily she would have been terrified of the sugges- 
tion of infidelity to Leicestershire, but her momentary 
desperation seemed greater even than her subjection to 
Hughie. It was mad to think of taking St. Gotherd 
as a lover at the crucial time when she was to be most 
dependent on the Duke’s generosity; but it seemed 
madder to her to hang her life on her own slender 
arms. The confidence which St. Gotherd’s hands upon 
her waist gave her made the last long hours of re- 
hearsal a mere bagatelle to what had gone before, and 
she seemed to regain a more normal mood with the 
food and stimulant he had sent for. Hughes made 
no demur, though the swing-dance was not as it should 
be at the real performance, and if the crowd com- 
mented she did not hear — she hardly cared. No one 
but a woman in Beauty’s condition could have so ex- 
aggerated the slight risk and its terrors to her own 
mind, or have passed so swiftly from one mood to an- 
other as she did that night. Even St. Gotherd seemed 
suddenly a friend, and had assumed a new importance 
in her life. 

Truth to tell, there was something more than mere 
physical nervousness in her fear. The thought of 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 351 

what would happen if her hands did give way, if she 
were flung away in mid-swing by the force of her own 
impetus, alternated across her mind like trembling 
shadow and dazzling light. She was even more afraid 
of a wild impulse that had once or twice seized her 
than of an accident. For would not this be a safe 
deliverance, a final mad dash for safety? The terror 
that had her by the throat was not normal. The un- 
balanced revulsion from childbirth had got behind her 
and driven her forward on many a mad scheme in her 
own brain, never yet put in practice. Supposing that 
the impulse seized her suddenly in the dance, and that 
life seemed intolerable! . . . She shut her dewy blue 
eyes with a sudden sickness and prayed that she might 
not think of it again. — 

The dress rehearsal ended in the small hours, and 
the over-worked Company drifted away one by one 
to their homes (sometimes on the outskirts of Lon- 
don), dead-beat, and feeling every one of them that 
it was a miracle if the performance went rightly. 
There was only a certain number of hours between 
them and the opening night in which to sleep and eat 
themselves back to some sort of strength to face the 
strain. Sceneshifters, limelight men, stage-hands, 
went out wearily into the dawn, and thanked Heaven 
that at least they were not the Stage-Manager ; for 
Sydney Hughes did not leave the theatre until half- 
past six that morning, and as the taxi took him swiftly 
homeward he remembered fifteen things that would 
necessitate his being back at his work some hours 
before the curtain was rung up. Much will be entered 
in the book of the Recording Angel against the name 
of Syddie Hughes, and if it is noted that he could 


352 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

swear like a ruffian, be sure that it will also stand to 
his credit that he never left his “ job ” while he could 
stand up to it, or neglected a responsibility. — 

The morning’s post brought a scrap of comfort to 
distract Beauty Darling. 

Her old friend Dr. Hardinge was in London by 
chance, and he and Michael Phayre would be in the 
House on the first night to see her, as Michael had al- 
ways contrived to be when she was playing. Beauty 
knew that Michael was married, or about to be, but 
had never written to ask him to bring his wife to see 
her. She had a fierce resentful sense that he might 
avoid doing so, even if he did not refuse; and she 
could not brook having Meta set above her, even for 
such subtle reasons as might influence Michael Phayre, 
and which would never have influenced her at all. But 
it was like the old Michael to come on a first night, 
anyway, and she brightened. Dr. Hardinge wrote, as 
he had always done, with news of his sister and of 
Dublin, and a kindly congratulation on her success, 
which he was looking forward to see. She fancied 
that Michael could not have told him of her connexion 
with the Duke, though it was practically public prop- 
erty. Beauty had never gauged the meaning of char- 
ity, or of such natures as her two friends. 

Dr. Hardinge had gone to Chelsea almost as soon as 
he arrived in London, and had been introduced to 
Michael’s wife in the small rooms they still occupied 
off Church Street. They had married before they 
would have done owing to the sudden death of Mrs. 
Chumleigh, and the girl being left alone in the world; 
but it had never been personal poverty that kept them 
apart. If Meta had had anyone to push her as Allonby 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 353 

Had pushed Beauty Darling, she would have remained 
on the Comedy stage and been content to work hard 
even though she never reached the top of the ladder; 
but she had no chance of doing anything but walk on in 
London, and unless the future were very black, indeed, 
Michael did not want her to go on tour and spend 
some seven months of their year apart from him. 
They were both frankly agreed that she should not 
try again for Musical Comedy, in London or out of it. 

“ Not that it’s a bad life if you know the ropes,” 
Phayre said boyishly to Dr. Hardinge. He was sitting 
on the edge of the little platform he had put up on which 
to pose his models, with his hands hugging his knees. 
The studio was really the one sitting-room that he and 
Meta had. But she retired to a small kennel of a 
dining-room to darn Michael’s socks when he was at 
work, as she explained. “ No, it’s not a bad life — 
no life need be bad. But it’s a strain to be always 
putting on the brakes downhill and to steer at the same 
time.” 

“ And in the present state of things so much depends 
on the steering,” said Meta quietly. “ I was unlucky 
enough to be in the same piece as Mr. St. Gotherd the 
last time I played in Musical Comedy, and — I believe 
I made an enemy of him for ever.” 

“ Was it so bad as that? ” said Dr. Hardinge com- 
prehensively. 

Meta looked up at her husband frankly. “ Shall we 
tell him? ” she said. 

“ Yes, go on,” he answered with a nod. 

“ He came up behind me and put his hand on my 
neck under my pinafore — you know we all wear pina- 
fores in Musical Comedy at rehearsal to save the 

23 


354 THE CAREER OE BEAUTY DARLING 

dresses. And when I asked him to go away he told 
me not to be a little fool — no one would see. Then 
I lost my temper, and told him not to be a bigger fool 
and annoy a girl who did not want his attentions.” 

Dr. Hardinge’s eyes began to twinkle. Phayre 
nodded. “ Yes, she really did,” he said. “ It an- 
swered better than tragedy or tears.” 

“ He said, 4 1 believe you really mean it/ ” remarked 
Meta, going on with the needlework in her lap. “ And 
he left me alone after that. But I heard that he said 
to Mr. Walton that it was a pity to have dull and 
dowdy girls in the chorus, and the Satyr was not nearly 
so smart as Allonby’s. That was one reason why 
I got my notice soon after, I believe,” she ended 
simply. 

“ And yet you do not call that a bad life? ” said Dr. 
Hardinge thoughtfully. 

“ It sounds unfair,” said Michael cheerfully. “ But 
I don’t know that it is. A certain class of woman has 
gone on the Musical Comedy stage and made a tradi- 
tion, and the men about the theatre expect to profit 
by it. Then there comes a straight girl who upsets 
their calculations, and from their standard they say 
that that is unfair. Nevertheless, you see the girl can 
go straight if she pleases.” 

“ She must know the ropes a little, as you said, first 
of all,” said Meta gently. “ It isn’t the men inside 
the theatre so much as those outside, really. Of 
course, very bad cases are rare, but they do occur, and 
there is always the possibility.” 

“ Tell me the bad case,” said Dr. Hardinge. He 
was thinking of Beauty Darling. 

“ It was a girl at the Satyr ; she had not fallen into 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 355 

Mr. O’Donno van’s hands, but one of the chorus men 
managed to introduce her to a friend of his — a man 
with money — who wanted her.” — 

“If she hadn’t gone to supper it would have been all 
right,” interrupted Michael. “ That’s what Meta 
means by ‘ knowing the ropes/ ” 

“ Not always, Michael : sometimes it is the girls who 
are the birds of prey, and the men are merely made 
to pay for the supper. But in this case the girl thought 
there was no harm, and went with the man to some 
disreputable restaurant. When he found that things 
were not going as he wished, he drugged her.” 

“ I should have said that was impossible,” said Dr. 
Hardinge quickly. “ It is not easy to drug without 
collusion.” 

“ The waiter had been bribed, you see ; and the cab- 
man who drove them on to the man’s room was bribed. 
That was an exceptional case, because the man was 
determined to get hold of that particular girl.” 

“ What did she do ? ” 

“ She went with the crowd after that,” said Meta 
Phayre, and there was the shadow of a great patience 
on her face. “ She said what was the use of fighting 
Fate — the thing was done, and no one thought any- 
thing of it. When I knew her she was supposed to 
be one of the fastest of the Satyr girls; but I always 
felt there was something to like in her. She told me 
her story one day.” 

“ Yes ; and she didn’t lie,” added Michael. “ The 
man who sold her to his friend corroborated the state- 
ment as something to his own credit.” 

“ He adds considerably to his salary by such intro- 
ductions,” said Meta dryly. “ The girl was called 


356 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

Mona Morley — she was a friend of Beauty Dar- 
ling’s.” 

“ Poor Beauty ! ” said Dr. Hardinge, with a sudden, 
hopeless pang. “ There is no way out for her, I’m 
afraid, Mrs. Phayre.” 

Meta raised her grave eyes with a little questioning 
expression. “ Don’t you think that one must set a 
new standard, and call it a question of compensa- 
tions ? ” she said. “ Beauty has certain things she 
wants, and certain necessities of her nature are satis- 
fied. If she will only not run into excesses, of excite- 
ment or debt, I don’t know that she will not be happier 
on the whole than if she had married a man such as 
Barbara Sinclair did, or even a boy of the type of Lord 
Hermal.” 

“ It isn’t the morality of the moment I was thinking 
about,” Dr. Hardinge confessed. “As you say, one 
sets a new standard for a girl born and bred and 
brought up as Beauty Darling has been. But Beauty 
will never make successful speculations in life — she 
is not a financier of existence. And then there comes 
an inevitable To-morrow.” 

“ Poor Beauty ! ” — Michael Phayre spoke very 
kindly. “ But it is just that failure for which one 
loves her. If she had been of the coarser grain of 
Miss Cherry Bough or Miss Folly Bird, she would 
have looked more to the future, and would have been 
less like the butterfly basking in the present sun. But 
it is for that very lack of prudence — almost stupidity 
— that one wants to protect her.” 

Hardinge rose from the shabby arm-chair he had 
been occupying, and began to walk up and down the 
untidy room, shoving plaster figures and gutta-percha 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 357 

models out of his way unconsciously. When he was 
roused the old doctor was always restless. 

“ I can see no way out for her,” he said, frowning 
with his grizzled brows. “ No way out. Poor 
Beauty ! Such a perfect piece of flesh and blood that 
men could not leave it alone, but must needs spoil it 
as soon as may be. Oh, these girls ! How they make 
our hearts ache when they are strong, and make us 
hold our breath when they are weak! ” 

Phayre crossed the room to his wife’s side and kissed 
her hair. “ How dare you make Dr. Hardinge’s heart 
ache, Meta ! ” he said whimsically. “ But you will 
never make him hold his breath.” — 

“ We had a lady to see us the other day who rather 
puzzled us,” said Meta, turning to the doctor. “ Was 
she weak or strong, I wonder? She came with Sir 
Rupert — you know, Michael’s R.A. friend. Her 
name is Lady Jane Noble, and she paints.” 

“ She has the right feeling too,” said Phayre, with 
an odd glint of the professional in his eyes. “ I 
should like to have helped her a little.” 

“ She said that no one could help her,” said Meta 
musingly. “ I wondered so much what she meant. I 
am sure it wasn’t only in art.” 

“ She has married that Captain Noble who ran after 
Beauty,” said Phayre quietly. “ That is what she 
meant, perhaps.” 

“ Toujours Beauty! ” said Dr. Hardinge. 

The sentiment seemed to find an echo that very 
night in the theatre, when the new piece opened. It 
was “ toujours Beauty ” indeed ! Despite the inevita- 
ble blunders of a first performance the play was 
obviously going to be a success, and it was the more 


358 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

amazing because the plot was more scattered, the situ- 
ations more impossible, the burlesque of life more dull 
and sordid, than is usual even in Musical Comedy. 
The music was of the waltziest order (there were at 
least five waltz tunes for the principal solos, waltz time 
and rhythm being for some occult reason the easiest 
vehicle for dreamy passion), and the “ Fancy me your 
Fancy Boy ” song and dance for St. Gotherd was 
lugged in by the hair as it were, and had no bearing 
on the plot whatever. Hardinge and Phayre looked 
at each other in a kind of amazed despair. For the 
pitiful point of it all was that a wave of Imperialism 
was passing over London, and the Management had 
scored a point by advertising the piece as of British 
manufacture — the author was English, the lyrics 
were English, the composer, alas! was typically Eng- 
lish in his efforts. “ No wonder that we adapt so 
much from the French and German as a rule, if this is 
all that England can produce ! ” said Phayre in comic 
desperation. But the play was going to be a success, 
and to run for a year at least, owing to three things — 
first, the English manufacture, which, without the least 
originality, had appealed to public taste with all the 
worst popularities; second, Gideon St. Gotherd, who 
was always a draw, and earned his hundred pounds a 
week by the ape-like methods he had made his own, 
capering madly to lift the flatness of the scenes upon 
his emasculate shoulders; and third, Beauty Darling, 
the all-but-acclaimed courtezan, thrusting her fair face 
and body into the gaps of the plotless plot and pointless 
dialogue. 

Tou jours Beauty! — the friends might have said it 
pver and over as the piece progressed, and the heroine 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 359 

of it sang, and smiled, and was played round, as chil- 
dren play round a flower-decked maypole. She did 
not act herself, because she could not; but she repeated 
her words with suitable gestures and tones, as she had 
been taught. By the same token she danced a little, 
but not much. Beauty was never a dancer. She 
lacked the fire and the strength and the instinct which 
is part of the training. But it all served well enough, 
and her voice at least was above the average. Save 
that the top notes sounded a little sharp if anything, 
she had lost none of its roundness and sweetness 
despite the strain upon her, and to-night she was mak- 
ing a double effort, for fear that St. Gotherd might 
have guessed something. Why had he promised to 
hold her last night in the swing dance, and told her he 
knew she was frightened ? He had kept his word, but 
why had he suggested it? In the desperate fatigue 
and terror of the dress rehearsal she had not asked 
herself this question — she had been thankful for the 
respite. But in the morning and all day before the 
first performance she began to torture herself afresh. 
He must not know — no one must know — yet. Even 
if they guessed later on, she could not have them know 
in her panic-stricken present. For a month at leas: 
she could keep on with her part, and then it would be 
easier to take a rest. — 

The house from the stage looks nothing but a black 
gulf, and it is exceedingly difficult for the chorus girls 
to distinguish anyone even in the front rows of the 
stalls or the boxes. This is very aggravating when 
.some new “ boy ” is sending them round notes and 
presents, and explaining where he sits, because it would 
be useful to inspect him from the other side of the 


360 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

floats before replying to his advances. Of course, if 
you know who is there it is easier to act at them, even 
if you cannot clearly see them. Beauty could not have 
distinguished Dr. Hardinge and Phayre in the dress 
circle even if she had tried, and she was equally un- 
aware of the presence of Lord and Lady Hermal 
(Folly was just married, and had left the Satyr for the 
time being), but she recognized Sir Everton Toff — 
old Toffee — in a box with other men, and the Maiden- 
bridges. The boxes nearest the stage were compara- 
tively easy to see, despite the delusive reflection of the 
floats, and were all well filled. Beauty directed her 
attention to them at her first opportunity. . . . 

God! What was that? Across the gulf of black- 
ness and the misleading flare some dim and horrible 
memory seemed to hover, something hardly definite, 
but like the pang of a raw nerve. A party of men were 
in the box on the prompt side, and one rising to look 
at the house appeared for a second in prominence. The 
evil head hung a moment in space before Beauty's eyes, 
like a mask of unrelenting Fate, then dropped down 
again into an indistinguishable blur as he took his seat. 
He was here then, like some ominous shadow, and the 
uneducated fear of those who are naturally supersti- 
tious took hold on Beauty’s mind that this boded no 
good to her. The encounter in Piccadilly had been 
nearer, but hardly so revolting to her as this. For it 
was Trevor Guy. 

If she had had any words to say at the moment 
Beauty would have “ dried up ” and forgotten them ; 
but she had seized the opportunity of the hero’s appeal 
to her — in waltz time, of course — to look round the 
house. By the time she had to join in she had suffl- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 361 

ciently mastered her nerves to do so creditably, though 
the thing she had seen remained with her and made her 
feel a little cold. That he knew who she was she could 
not doubt, and remembered his part in her first undoing. 
She fancied his grating laugh to think of it. It turned 
her sick to imagine a chance meeting with him — that 
he might even worm his way round to her dressing- 
room to-night, and she would have thrown herself on 
anyone’s mercy to prevent it — Janet’s, St. Gotherd’s, 
even Hughes’s. The grinning spectre of the past ris- 
ing up before her now seemed the last strain that was 
snapping the thread of her endurance. But there was 
more to come. 

“ Mr. Allonby has sent round some champagne for 
you,” said Janet, when Beauty returned to her dressing- 
room between the acts. This was an unusual proceed- 
ing on Allonby’s part, for he had so far kept back the 
wine until the play was safely over; but his wise eyes 
saw an urgent necessity, and he had had a few minutes 
with his leading lady before the curtain first rose. 
“ Now don’t go drinking without eating anything, or it 
will go to your head ! ” 

“ Give it to me — I must have something,” said the 
girl in a spent voice. She leaned her head against the 
other woman’s unfriendly bosom and broke down. 
“ Oh, Janet, I’m out of it ! I’m out of it ! I can’t go 
on ! ” 

“ My word ! This is worse than last night ! ” mut- 
tered Janet, holding some of the wine to Beauty’s lips. 
“You do look done! You’ll have to rouge again. 
What’s upset you ? ” 

“ There’s a man in the house I haven’t seen for 
years,” whispered Beauty, clinging even to the sup- 


362 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

port of Janet in her weakness. “ Don’t let him come 
here, for Christ’s sake ! ” 

She meant that ; for the nonce it was no blasphemy, 
but such a prayer as a dying man might pray. Janet’s 
eyes opened wide with curiosity and sharp interest. 
Of all things she had not credited Beauty Darling 
with any dread of her past — a dread that might 
prove useful as a tool to handle, even as she meant to 
handle her knowledge of the new Lady Hernial. 
Such slips as Beauty had made Janet regarded as 
causing her no particular discomfort; but there was 
more than shame here — there was abject fear. She 
almost shook Beauty in her excitement and determina- 
tion to rouse her. 

“ Of course I’m not going to let anyone in. 
(There’s Giddy Goat at the door now. — Go away, 
Mr. St. Gotherd! I shan’t open the door.) Tell me 
who it is? ” 

“A man named Trevor Guy — don’t tell anyone 
else, Janet.” 

“ I’m not such a fool. I heard the Duke tell you 
he wasn’t fit for a woman to know.” Janet did not 
often betray that she overheard private conversations; 
but she was off her guard. “ Why, it’s that man who 
painted the picture of you ! ” 

“ Yes.” — The long shiver of the limbs would have 
touched a softer heart. 

“ What’s he like ? I’d better know him.” — 

“ A tall man — elderly.” — 

“ Second act, please ! ” said the call-boy at the door. 
“ Five minutes ! ” 

Beauty drank her wine and ate a sandwich fever- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 363 

ishly, while Janet added more rouge to her quivering 
face. 

“ She’ll just get through it, and no more,” said the 
maid shrewdly to herself. “ I must have a squint at 
this Guy. Wonder whether there’s something to be 
made out of him!” 

On the stage the chorus were being grouped for an 
Arctic wedding at the North Pole, and the cotton- 
wool “ snow ” with which the bride was to be pelted 
was dealt out to each in turn. It was a pretty open- 
ing to the act, but by no means original. 

“ Props ! Where’s Props ? ” echoed on all sides, 
and the unhappy property master was seen running 
to and fro with his hair on end, as property masters 
often seepi to wear it, and small wonder ! Arches of 
icicles were upheld over the heads of the show girls 
who came down in procession and took their usual 
stand at the footlights, and a light cart all glittering 
with frost and snow was ready to roll in at the wings 
with Beauty Darling enthroned on an iceberg — or 
should have been. Props? Where is Props? 

“ Get back on the prompt side ! Damn you, get 
out of the way there, child ! Miss Darling — where’s 
Miss Darling? ” 

“ Here I am, Mr. Hughes.” 

“ Will you get up in the cart now? There will be 
no one to help you at the moment — every one’s on. 
They have to rush off and drag you in — .” 

Beauty’s entrance was after the rise of the curtain, 
to give her the centre of the stage and the eyes of the 
audience, which never focus for the first few minutes. 
But she had not long to wait. She elected to climb 


364 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

into the cart at once, and laughed a little hysterically 
as two of the chorus men helped her in. 

“ Don’t overturn me as you drag me in ! ” she said. 
“ This cursed cart is crazy, I think. The wheels won’t 
go round.” 

“ Props ! Where Props ! ” 

Props ran to demonstrate that the cart was all right 
— it only wanted turning on the slant of the stage 
and it would run down to the floats of itself. The 
green light in the wings warned those who could not 
hear another signal that the curtain was going up, and 
the great flies sucked it into themselves, and the act 
went on. 

Half-way through came the swing dance. The 
stage was emptied save for Beauty Darling and Gideon 
St. Gotherd, the two prime favourites, for the real 
hero of the play hardly mattered. St. Gotherd was 
chief Comedian, and even Jester, the second “ funny 
man,” was better loved by the audience than the lead 
• — always excepting those ladies who admired his fig- 
ure and sent him notes to his dressing-room as fla- 
grant as any received by the Allonby girls from their 
“ Best Boys.” The second lights were turned on, red 
from the floats, red from the flies, and the band began 
the effect of the evening, the waltz that accompanied 
the swings. 

Beauty had been wrought up to this moment. It 
is not an easy thing for a girl to swing by the clasp 
of her arms round a man’s neck, or for the man to 
stand the strain of her weight. Gideon St. Gotherd 
owed his capacity to his long training as a dancer — 
it was the knack he possessed rather than the strength. 
Beauty owed hers to her supple body, and her slight 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 365 

training as a dancer also. There was no real danger, 
only a chance of skill, or the Management would never 
have sanctioned it. Yet as the stage cleared and the 
red lights went up, the girl caught her breath with 
an almost supernatural dread. She was not imagina- 
tive, but it seemed like the reflection of hell-fire to 
her, and herself doomed to torment. There was no 
dialogue — St. Gotherd took a gliding step towards 
her and caught her on his arm, a mass of draped 
chiffon under which she wore no corset, for she wanted 
the help of every muscle untrammelled. He felt the 
live waist beneath his hand, and pressed her closer 
as their feet began to move in rhythm. Beauty 
turned her head instinctively and looked over her own 
shoulder at their two shadows, almost red too in the 
red glow. Something in the aversion of her face 
seemed to inflame her partner, and a wicked light 
leaped under his drooping lids. 

“Hold tight in the swings, Beauty,” he whispered, 
just before the moment when she must clasp her hands 
round his neck. “ I will keep my balance — but re- 
member, I carry double !” 

She gave a convulsive shiver and locked her hands ; 
then, as he spun, the whole meaning of what he had 
said came back on her. Her light feet left the stage, 
and her body began to revolve in a circle round him, 
her rosy chiffons parting and closing to display her 
form to the waist. She swung straight out for a min- 
ute, while the madness of her despair blazed in her 
brain; he knew — the world knew — that awful face 
in the box there would know and mouth at her. Then, 
with an irresistible impulse, she broke her hands apart 
while her feet were towards the House, and her body 


366 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

was flung far forward into the shrieking orchestra, 
who crouched and fled. She struck upon the rail and 
fell. — 

The House rose with one cry. There was a rush 
forward, and the shriek upward that she was killed, 
while the pit surged to the barriers, and the gallery 
yelled inarticulate horror. Some one in the band 
raised her, and carried the limp body out through the 
barriers, round by the stage box, behind the scenes 
again, while the red lights went out and the curtain 
came down. Then a man in evening dress came in 
front with a white face, and said that Miss Darling 
was not dead, but much injured; the play could not 
go on. And people gathered up their wraps, shiver- 
ing, and left, talking in disjointed whispers. 

At the stage-door a crowd of men in evening dress 
struggled with the police for news from the door- 
keeper, and the answer was still the same : “ Not 

dead, but we think dying.” A doctor had made his 
way behind, as soon as the girl was carried out, and 
there in the nearest dressing-room — not her own, but 
Gideon St. Gotherd’s — was making his examination. 
He was joined by a colleague, an elderly man with 
grey hair, who said he knew Miss Darling and was a 
friend of hers. 

“ Better let her see him first, then, if she rallies,” 
said the Stage-Manager hurriedly, drawing the girl 
who played second lead away, for she was crying 
heartily, with the abandonment of her kind. 

“Oh! do you think she will live, Mr. Hughes? 
Oh, poor Beauty ! Is she in any pain, doctor? ” 

Dr. Hardinge lifted his kind, shrewd eyes and said, 
“ Hush ! ” — for the lids had quivered, the lips con- 


THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 367 

traded in the injured girl’s face. Then it settled into 
oblivion again, and she seemed likely to lie so to the 
end, though still breathing. 

“ Try some more brandy,” said the other doctor, as 
a last resource. “Lift her head — she may swallow 
now.” 

A man who had entered the dressing-room behind 
Dr. Hardinge stepped forward before he did, and 
lifted the girl’s head. It was done so skilfully that 
the doctors did not interfere, but at the touch of his 
hands Beauty Darling opened her flower-blue eyes, 
wide, and sighed, as if something had reached her. 
even through the mists fast closing round. That mag- 
ical touch! Those wizard’s fingers! — the man was 
behind her head, out of sight, and yet she uttered a 
strangled cry. It was Dr. Hardinge on whom her 
conscious glance rested, but her sharpened instinct told 
her that malignant Fate had brought her once more 
into physical contact with Trevor Guy. . . . 

Outside the stage-door Michael Phayre walked up 
and down, up and down, till past midnight. He could 
not get past the barriers of officialism, even if he had 
tried; but he did not try. He waited for Dr. Har- 
dinge, and looked up at the stars and the kind April 
sky, seeing once again in his mind Beauty Darling’s up- 
turned face in the moment of her triumph, before she 
flew outward and fell with that sickening crash — the 
young, soft face, with its wonderful outlines of jaw 
and throat, and the glossy curls falling backwards from 
her forehead! He saw her as some perfect thing, as 
yet undespoiled to men’s eyes, and in the bloom of 
the face and body that God had given her. ... A 
woman passed him in the dark byway, and begged of 


368 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING 

him. He gave her pence mechanically, and hoped that 
she would buy gin and a little forgetfulness. For 
her face even in the dim light was terrible, and her 
hoarse voice might once have been sweet. It was the 
drink that had brought her to it — not the shame. 
The life that began and ended in excitement led from 
one dissipation to another, until it came to this — 
fluttering rags and a hoarse voice that begged. . . . 
He turned back to the stage door, leaning his shoulder 
wearily against the doorway, and his strained eyes saw 
Dr. Hardinge coming out to tell him what he waited 
to hear. 

“ She is dead,” said Hardinge briefly. 

Both men lifted their hats as if by instinct, and 
stood bareheaded under the stars of the wild spring 
sky. 

“ Thank God ! ” said Michael Phayre. 


THE END 












t 





